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THE UNITED STATES 



AN OUTLINE OF POLITICAL HISTORY 



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CENTRAL TIME 11 A.M. 



EASTERN TIME 12 NOON 




THE UNITED STATES 



AN OUTLINE OF POLITICAL HISTORY 



1492-1871 



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BY 



GOLDWIN SMITH, D.C.L. 



" T/tzs will sometime hence be a vast Empire, the seat of power and 
learning. Nature has refused it nothing, and there will grow a people out 
of our little spot, England, that will fill this vast space and divide this por- 
tion of the globe with the Spaniards, who are possessed of the other half." — 
General Wolfe 

" I am not wanting in affection and love for Atnerica. I ant rather 
wanting iti distrust and ingratitude to^vards Europe." — Dr. Roque Saenz 
Pena, Speech at the Pan-American Conference at Washington, 1890 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd, 
1899 

All rights reserved 







COPTBIGHT, 1893, 

By MACMILLAN AND CO. 



Set up and electrotyped August, 1893. Reprinted September, November, 
December, 1893; November, 1899. 



Nortoooti ^Jrcsa : 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 

Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE. 

To an Englishman, particularly if he is visiting America, 
an outline of the political history of the United States 
may not be unwelcome. An American, being familiar 
with the main facts and the general relations of parties, 
would look for details. It is, therefore, for English rather 
than American readers that this sketch is intended. If it 
comes into the hands of an American, his liberality will 
make allowance for the position of an Englishman who 
regards the American Commonwealth as the great achieve- 
ment of his race, and loolks forward to the voluntary 
reunion of the American 'branches of the race within its 
pale, yet desires to do justice to the mother country, and 
to render to her the meed of gratitude which will always 
be her due. 

Should this volume find acceptance it may be followed 
by a companion volume on the same scale, and treating, 
necessarily with the same succinctness, the recent history 
of parties, and the questions of the present day. 

A complete list of all the authorities consulted would 
be out of proportion to the book itself, but special obliga- 
tions should be acknowledged to Gordon's " History of 
the American Revolution," Bancroft's "History of the 
United States," Hildreth's " History of the United States," 



vi PREFACE. 

Palfrey's "History of New England," Henry Adams's 
" History of the United States," Schouler's " History of 
the United States," McMaster's "History of the People 
of the United States," Bryant's "Popular History of 
the United States," Justin Winsor's "Narrative and 
Critical History of America," Charles K. Adams's " Co- 
lumbus," Draper's "The Civil War in America," the 
" Epochs of American History " series, the " History of 
the Civil War in America " by the Comte de Paris, the 
" Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and 
United States History," the " American Statesmen " series, 
the works of Professor Fiske, Swinton's "Decisive Battles 
of the War," Sabine's " Loyalists of the American Revolu- 
tion," Blaine's " Twenty Years of Congress," Thomas 
Jones's " History of New York during the Revolutionary 
War," published by the New York Historical Society, 
and the " American Commonwealths " series, also Ban- 
croft's " History of the Constitution of the United States." 
The writer would be glad to think that his work had been 
instrumental in exciting the curiosity of English readers 
and leading them to resort to the sources of ample infor- 
mation mentioned in this list. 



The writer cannot send this fourth edition of his work to press, 
without specially acknowledging the kindness of his American readers 
and reviewers, whose reception of a book which in some things con- 
travenes clierished traditions is a proof of American candour and 
liberality. Perhaps they have discerned, beneath the British critic of 
American History, the Anglo-Saxon who, to the Eepublic which he 
regards as the grand achievement of his race, desires to offer no hom- 
age less pure or noble than the truth. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 

The Colonies. 

Discovery of a western continent by Columbus — Early adventurers — 
The landing of the Mayflower — The Plymouth pilgrims — Their 
allegiance to the old land — The founding of Massachusetts — The 
Puritan commonwealth — Early religious strifes — Political aspect of 
Puritanism — Puritan democracy — A federation formed — Puritan 
legislation — Social life — Slavery — Relations with the Indians — 
The new colonies and the Crown — Massachusetts reduced to a de- 
pendency — William III and Massachusetts — Decay of Puritanism — 
Witchcraft — Increase of wealth — Vii'ginia — Virginian life and 
society — Slavery and slave laws — Politics, the church, and educa- 
tion — The founding of Maryland — Religious strifes and political 
changes — Georgia — The founding of Pennsylvania — New York 
and New Jersey — Characteristics of the Middle States — Restric- 
tions on colonial trade — Political embroilments — Benjamin Frank- 
lin Pages 1-63 



CHAPTER II. 

Revolution, Independence, and Union. 

French hostilities in the new world — The quarrel with England — The 
colonial relationship — Cause of the revolt — Separation and the sep- 
arators — Samuel Adams — Patrick Henry — Irritation of Massachu- 
setts — Fomenting influences — Trade restrictions — The Stamp Act 
and the tea duty — Ebullition at Boston — Repression — The King's 
difficulties — Federation for defence — The Declaration of Independ- 
ence — Opening of the war — Lexington — ^ Bunker's Hill — Evacua- 
tion of Boston — The loyalists — Canada attacked — New York 

vii 



CONTENTS. 

taken — Washington at Valley Forge — Character of Washington — 
Burgoy ne' s expedition — State of the country — Character of the troops 
— Financial disturbance — French aid — Arnold and AndrS — British 
successes in the South — Capitulation of Cornwallis at Yorktown — 
Treatment of the loyalists — England and the separation — The col- 
onies after the revolt — Constitutional and other changes — Impotency 
of Congress — Discontent rife — The federal convention — The con- 
stitution — Provisions of the constitution . . . Pages 64-129 



CHAPTER III. 

Republic. 

Washington president — Presidential etiquette and state — Success of 
the constitution — Birth of parties — Alexander Hamilton — His abil- 
ity, character, and principles — His Secretaryship of the Treasury — 
Thomas Jefferson — His character, theories, and political principles 
— Growth of the Republic — England and the new republic — George 
Ill's reception of John Adams — Washington's second term — The 
French Revolution and American parties — The question of belliger 
ent rights — Jay's treaty — Retirement of Washington — The city of 
Washington — John Adams President — His appearance and charac- 
ter — Resentment against France — The feeling quelled — Bitterness 
of party spirit — Jefferson President — His inaugural address — Ac- 
quisition of Louisiana — Jefferson's first term — His second term — 
International complications : neutral trade, belligerent rights, impi-ess- 
ment of seamen — Action of the Leopard and Chesapeake — Jefferson 
places an embargo on trade — Madison President — Diplomatic em- 
broilments — Influence of Kentucky — Henry Clay — Motives leading 
to war — The war of 1812 — The treaty of Ghent — Battle of New 
Orleans — Results of the war — Boundaries in Maine and Oregon — 
Monroe President — The Monroe doctrine . . Pages 1.30-176 



CHAPTER IV. 

Democracy and Slavery, 

Monroe's Presidency — The era of good feeling — Geogi'aphical division 
between freedom and slavery — The Presidential fever and its effects 
— Reign of the " Machine " — Henry Clay — His character and prin- 
ciples — Daniel Webster — His character — His oratory — John C. 
Calhoun — His character and principles — Slavery and the Senate 



CONTENTS. ix 

debates — Benton — Randolph — The tariff question — Free trade vs. 
protection — Webster ; Clay ; McDuffie — Public land and improve- 
ments — John Quincy Adams — His character and principles — Mili- 
tary renown as a political influence — Andrew Jackson's Presiden- 
tial campaign — Jackson's inauguration — The spoils go to the victor 
— A court quarrel — Jackson's despotism — The National Bank 
question — South Carolina rises against the tariff — The Force 
Bill — Effects of Jackson's policy — Demagogism — Van Buren — 
Party lines — The anti- Masons — William Harrison's Presidential 
campaign — Tyler President — Texas and Mexico — Clay's candida- 
ture — Polk President — War with Mexico — Texas annexed — Tay- 
lor President — Fillmore President — Close of Webster's career — 
Texas and slavery — End of the Whig party — Pierce President — 
The Knownothings — The Irish vote — Growth of the Republic — 
Progress westward — Development and expansion — Political and 
social democracy Pages 177-220 



CHAPTER V. 

Rupture and Reconstruction. 

Slavery forced to the front — The question a thing of the past — Its source 
— Ancient compared with American slavery — Fusion of races impos- 
sible — Emancipation discouraged — Slavery not elevating — Condi- 
tion of the negro — Sinister aspects and influences of slavery — Slave 
industry — Aggressive character of slavery — Apologies for the sys- 
tem — Possibilities of a peaceful solution — Dominance of slavery — 
Its adherents — Protests, political, philosophical, literary — William 
Lloyd Garrison — Wendell Phillips — Strong feeling in the South — 
Case of Anthony Burns — Stephen Douglas in politics — Squatter 
sovereignty — The Kansas- Nebraska Act — Case of Dred Scott — 
Free Soilers — Disorder in Kansas — Violent debates in Congress — 
The two parties, Republican and Democratic — John Brown — Abra- 
ham Lincoln — His early life — His appearance, capability, and char- 
acter — His political principles — His powers of debate — Elected 
President — South Carolina secedes — Other States follow — A 
Southern Confederacy formed — Slavery the cause of secession — 
The Confederate government — Buchanan's vacillation — Concessions 
offered by Congress — The crisis unexpected — Possibilities of peace- 
ful separation — State sovereignty — The struggle a regular war — 
Lincoln as President — His object the preservation of the Union — 
War breaks out by the capture of Fort Sumter — The military strength 
of North and South compared — Means adopted to obtain men and 



CONTENTS. 

money — England and the South — Neutrality of the British govern- 
ment — Capture of Messrs. Mason and Slidell — Foreign nations 
and the war — Strategy of the North — Chief scene of war — Bull 
Run — Northern military organization — General McClellan placed 
in command — McClellan and Lincoln — Generals Lee and Jackson 

— Pope replaces McClellan — The equipment of the respective armies 

— Antietam — Lincoln proclaims emancipation — Enlistment of ne- 
groes — Fort Pillow — Burnside put in command — Battle of Fred- 
ericksburg — Hooker replaces Burnside — Is defeated — General Grant 
^Fort Donelson taken — General Sherman — Battle of Shiloh — 
Vicksburg — Farragut — New Orleans taken — Benjamin Butler's 
proclamation — Murfreesborough — Character of the battles — The 
3Ierrimack and the Monitor — Blockade running — Lee enters Penn- 
sylvania — Irish riot in New York — Battle of Gettysburg — Fall of 
Vicksburg — The South in straits — The army of the Potomac — 
Battle of the Wilderness — Cold Harbour — Early attacks "Washing- 
ton — Sheridan desolates the Shenandoah Valley — Mechanical skill 
displayed in Sheridan's campaign — Hood replaces Johnston — At- 
lanta falls — Savannah and Charleston surrender — Nashville — Rich- 
mond evacuated — Lee surrenders at Appomattox — Lincoln re-elected 

— And murdered — His statesmanship — Humanity on the two 
sides — The Sanitary Commission — Democracy and war — The 
war and the constitution — Little or no disturbance of life at 
the North — No military usurpation — Finances — Effects on the 
South — Economical evils — War literature — Cost of the war — 

— Foreign questions — The Alabama question — Reconstruction 

— Lincoln's views — Amnesty — Andrew Johnson — The status of 
the negro Pages 221-301 



THE UNITED STATES 

AN OUTLINE OF POLITICAL HISTORY 



CHAPTER I. 



THE COLONIES. 



"DOUR centuries ago, Christopher Columbus, one of the 1492. 

Italian mariners whom the decline of their own repub- 
lics had put at the service of the world and of adventure, 
seeking for Spain a westward j)assage to the Indies as a 
set-off against the achievements of Portuguese discoverers 
eastwards, lighted on America. Tlie new continent was 
thus discovered by the man who had staked most on the 
belief that no such continent existed, and that the way to 
the Indies was open by sea. That the daring barques of 
the Northmen had long before found their way from 
Greenland to the coast of North America is likely, though 
not certain. What is certain is that nothing more came, 
or in that age could come, of their visit than of the visit 
of a flock of sea-gulls. The basement of an old mill at 
Newport, which fancy turned into a Norse fortress, the 
Dighton rock, on which fancy traced Norse runes, the 
dykes at Watertown, in Massachusetts, in which fancy 
still sees the defences of the Norse city of Norumbega, 
only attest the yearnings of a new nation for antiquity. 

Columbus sailed in the age of enterprise and discovery, 
of re-awakened intellect and revived learning, of universal 
curiosit}" and romantic aspiration. He was in every way 
a typical man of his generation. He displayed in the high- 



2 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

est degree that daring spirit of adventure which could put 
forth in a tiny caravel without chart, quadrant, or even a 
full acquaintance with the compass, over the wide and wild 
Atlantic to an unknown shore ; and a shore which, when 
found, might teem with perils and be the abode of mon- 
sters or of demons. Humanity, since that time, has ad- 
vanced in many ways; but it has hardly advanced in 
fortitude. Columbus was also a devotee of a religion with 
more in it of Rome and of the Crusades than of the Gos- 
pel, and with more of the forms of devotion than of the 
spirit. Morally he was a type of the age which came 
between the fall of the Catholic and the rise of the Prot- 
estant faith, and had for its head Alexander VI, the moral 
monster of the Papacy, w^hose hand signed the Bull which 
divided the new world between two Catholic powers. In 
his youth it seems he served on board a pirate fleet. He 
began his intercourse with the natives of America by kid- 
napping, and he gave the word for the opening of the 
slave trade. His dealings with his own companions were 
equivocal. He was always in greedy quest of gold, though 
he professed, and perhaps believed, that he meant to use 
the gold in a crusade. He became the father of a line of 
adventurers who, like himself, were gold-seekers or seekers 
of lucre, gilding their rapacity with the same profession 
of zeal for the extension of religion, who sacked Mexico 
and Peru, trampled to pieces there, under the hoofs of 
conquest, the highest development of Indian civilization, 
worked to death the soft inhabitants of the American 
islands, and replaced them by the importation of African 
slaves. None of these adventurers looked upon America 
1565. as a new home, or thought of founding a nation. The 
Huguenots might have founded a nation in Florida had 



I. THE COLONIES. 3 

they not been massacred by the Spaniards. Missionary 
enterprise, to some extent, accompanied and redeemed 
the gold-seeking. It founded the Jesuit utopia in Para- 1527 
guay, and in the establishment of French Canada went ^550, 
hand in hand with that kingly thirst of dominion which, 
rather than colonization in the proper and beneficent 
sense, was the dominant motive of French enterprise in 
North America. But the aim of the Jesuit was not to 
found a nation. In the settlement of Virginia by Sir 1585 
Walter Raleigh, and, when Raleigh's romantic enterprise 1587, 
had failed, by a company of commercial adventurers, lucre, 
if not gold-seeking, was still the predominant motive. 
Of a hundred and forty-three settlers sent out, a large 
proportion were broken-down gentlemen seeking to repair 
their fortunes ; a few only were labourers or mechanics ; 
the rest were servants. To show how faint was their pur- 
pose of settlement, they brought no women. The subse- 
quent reinforcements were of the same kind, with some 
goldsmiths and refiners to help in seeking for gold where 
no gold was. A ship went home laden with shining mica, 
which was mistaken for gold. Food these colonists had to 
beg or steal from the Indians. To the crew of vagabonds 
were afterwards added jail-birds. Convicts were offered 
their choice between the gallows and Virginia, and some, 
we are told, chose the gallows. Only by the personal force 1607. 
and genius of John Smith, the one true captain, w^ho com- 
pelled gentlemen to wield the axe, telling chem that if 
they would not work they should not eat, was the colony 
saved from dissolution. It had been started on the false 
principle of joint stock industry, which deprives labour of 
its mainspring. Its place, Jamestown, has long been deso- 
late, and only fragments of ruin mark the site. In these 



4 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

days steam carries all the implements of husbandry, now 
brought to marvellous perfection, and all needful stores, 
with the emigrant into his field of settlement. In those 
days colonization was a death-struggle with nature. Some 
sustaining motive higher than gain was necessary to give 
man the victory and enable him to make for himself a new 
home in the wilderness, and to found a nation. 

Such a motive, together with the necessary habits of 
labour and powers of endurance, was present in the little 
train of emigrants who, after beating up and down for 
some days upon a bleak and wintry coast and receiving 
as their welcome to it a volley of Indian arrows, dis- 
embarked from the Mayflower on the 22nd of December, 
1620. Their landing was on the shore to which John 
Smith, its first explorer, had given the name of New 
England, at a spot which they named Plymouth, after 
the English port of that name from which they had 
sailed. Setting rhetorical exaggeration aside, we need 
not doubt that in watching that sad yet hopeful proces- 
sion of men, women, and children, we are witnessing one 
of the great events and one of the heroic scenes of 
history. The story of these emigrants is well known. 
They were dissenters from the Established Church of 
England, with simple hearts full of the intense faith and 
zeal inspired in those days by the new revelation of the 
pure Gospel. They had fled from the emissaries of 
)608. church law, first to Holland. There they had found 
themselves surrounded by a community highly commer- 
cial, whose manners their austere simplicity deemed 
corrupting, which did not strictly keep the Sabbath, and 
into whose worldliness their children were in danger 
of being drawn. They feared also the loss of their 



I. THE COLONIES. 5 

nationality, to which, though persecuted in England, 
they clung. They had then determined to seek a home 
beyond the Atlantic where they might enjoy their religion 
uncontaminated and in peace. A chartered company, the 
usual organ of commercial venture in those days, formed 
the English basis of their enterprise and the source of 
needful supplies. 

The Plymouth pilgrims, landing in mid-winter on a 
grim coast, underwent the severest sufferings. They 
were ill sheltered ; they had no bread, and were reduced 
to shellfish for food. More than half their number died. 
At one time only seven of them were left strong enough 
to tend the sick. It seems that they were saved from 
the Indian tomahawk only by a distemper which happened 
to prevail among the Indians. To use their own words, 
" all great and honourable actions are accompanied with 
great difficulties, and must be both undertaken and con- 
firmed with answerable courages." " It is not," they had 
said, " with us as with other men, whom small things can 
discourage or small discontents cause to wish themselves 
home again." Their language is instinct with the simple 
heroism of their enterprise. " Let it not be grievous to 
you," said their friends in England, " that you have been 
instruments to break the ice for others ; the honour shall 
be yours to the world's end." To the world's end the 
honour is theirs. If Columbus discovered the new conti- 
nent, they discovered the new world. 

Before landing, the pilgrims, " seeing that some among 
them were not well affected to concord," had drawn up 
this voluntary compact : — 

" In the name of God, amen ; we, whose names are 
underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign 



6 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

King James, . . . having undertaken, for the glory of 
God and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour 
of our King and country, a voyage to phant the first 
colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these 
presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, 
and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves 
together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering 
and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid ; 
and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such 
just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and 
offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet 
and convenient for the general good of the colony. Unto 
which we promise all due submission and obedience." 

It is true that this covenant was not a political mani- 
festo. It is not less true that it heralded a polity of 
self-government, anci may thus rank among the great 
documents of history. It breathes good-will to the land 
which the pilgrims had left, though the rulers of that 
land had cast them out. The Puritan exile did not say 
" Farewell, Babylon," but " Farewell, dear England." 
Unhappily these, in common with other colonists of the 
period, retained not only their love of the old land, but 
their political tie to it. They deemed themselves still 
liegemen of a sovereign on the other side of the Atlantic. 
This created a relation false from the beginning. Herein 
lay the fatal seeds of misunderstanding, of encroach- 
ment on the side of the home government, of revolt on 
that of the growing colony, and ultimately of revolution. 
The Hellenic colonist had gone forth to make his home 
in a new land, taking with him the sacred fire from the 
altar-hearth of his native city, but free from any political 
tie. His only bond to his native city was that of filial 



I. THE COLONIES. 7 

affection, gracefully expressed in honours paid to her 
representatives. The Hellenic colony was a colony in the 
true sense of the word, not a dependency. The English 
colony unhappily was a dependency, and when it grew 
strong enough to spurn dependence there was a bond to 
be broken which was not likely to be broken without 
violence and a breach of affection. Dependence Avas the 
result of two notions combined, that of the territorial right 
of discovery, and that of personal and indefeasible alle- 
giance. Let a mariner land and set up a flag on a strange 
shore, let him even sight that shore from his vessel, the 
whole region thenceforth, according to the European law 
of nations, belonged to his sovereign, and was that sov- 
ereign's to grant to whom he pleased. His Majesty of 1606. 
England by his charter granted North America, so far as it 
was then known, between certain degrees of latitude, in 
full property, with exclusive rights of jurisdiction, settle- 
ment, and traffic, to certain persons incorporated respec- 
tively as the London and Plymouth Companies. The 
Pope's pretension to divide the new world between Catho- 
lic powers was hardly more baseless. From the feudal 
system came down the idea of personal and indefeasible 
allegiance, with the lingering traces of which international 
law and diplomacy in our own day have had to deal. This 
was the beginning of woes, the full measure of which came 
in 1765. 

The foundation of New Plymouth was followed by that 
of Massachusetts, the great Puritan colony of all, and the 
leading shoot of American civilization, which presently 
drew to it New Plymouth, while it threw out from it, in 
different ways and partly by repulsion, the off-shoots which 
became Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and 



8 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

Vermont. The founders of Massachusetts were not, when 
they came out, Independents, like the company of the 
Mayflower, but Puritans in the proper sense of the term, 
that is, members of the Church of England who desired to 
remain within her pale, but to purify her from the vestiges 
of Rome, and at the same time to uplift her to a higher 
standard of Christian life. They even anxiously disclaimed 
any intention of separation. "They esteemed it their hon- 
our," they said, " to call the Church of England their 
dear mother, and could not part from their native country, 
where she specially resided, without much sadness of heart 
and many tears in their eyes ; ever acknowledging that 
such hope and part as they had attained in the common 
salvation they had received in her bosom and sucked from 
her breasts." But practical divorce from the Anglican 
hierarchy and ordinances, together with the liberating air 
of the new world, soon made them, like the Plymouth 

1G29. emigrants. Independents. From Charles I, who was no 
doubt glad to see the Puritan spirit carried off by emigra- 
tion, the Massachusetts Company received a liberal charter, 
which became the palladium of advancing independence. 
The colony was an object of fervent interest to the Puri- 
tans at home, and was recruited with some of their best 

1033. blood. Hither the excellent Cotton led from Boston in 
Lincolnshire, and the fair church that rises over it, a 
part of his flock to a Boston which soon became, and has 
remained, the centre of New England and the focus of 

1G33. New England civilization. Hither came Hugh Peters, 
the chaplain that was to be of the regicide republic. 

1033. Hither for a time came Henry Vane, as has been said, 
" young in years, but not yet in sage counsel old," for 
he brought with him a disquieting ambition. The first 



I. THE COLOXTES. 9 

governor -^as Winthrop, a wealthy Sussex gentleman, who 
left his manor house at the age of fort\--two to help in 
jilauting a Gospel kingdom in the new world. He was a 
noble specimen of the Puiitan character, uniting with its 
force the gentle grace which Mrs. Hutchinson has por- 
trayed in her picture of Colonel Hutchinson ; a ^vise coun- 
sellor, skilful as Hampden in the management of men, and 
in all distractions piously serene. Endicott and Dudley 
were Puritans of the sterner type. 

Besides Cotton, other clergymen came, highly educated 
at Oxford or Cambridge : more from Cambridge than 
from Oxford, because Cambridge lay in the eastern coun- 
ties, the home of Cromwell and the Ironsides. The 
inflow of Puritan life did not cease till the rising of 
the English nation against Charles and Laud gave the 
paily hope and work at home. 

In Massachusetts also the first settlers had their suffer- 
ings to undergo on that bleak coast, though not such suf- 
ferings as were undergone by the founders of Plymouth, 
the Massachusetts colony being better provided with 
funds and more assisted from home. Whatever was to 
1)e borne they bore. Like their precursors at Plymouth, 
they were bent on '-laying some good foundation, or at 
least making some way thereto, for the projjagating and 
advancing the Gospel and the kingdom of Christ in those 
remote parts of the world ; yea, even though they should 
be but as stepping stones unto others for the performing 
of so great a work." 

The Puritan commonwealth was a theocracy. It was 
mainly for the purpose of founding a Christian state that 
these men had given up all and gone forth into the 
wilderness. No one could be a citizen of Massachusetts 



10 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

who was not in close communion with one of the 
churches. The churches were organized on the Con- 
gregational principle, forming a group, each member of 
which was independent of the rest and chose its own 
pastor. But they were bound together by complete sym- 
pathy, identity of doctrine and of system was preserved, 
and discipline was practically enforced by them in con- 
cert. Baptism was limited to the children of those who 
were in close communion, and only to those who were 
in close communion was the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper administered. Every citizen was required to 
contribute to the maintenance of a church. Thus, not 
only was there a union of church and state, but church 
and state were one. This was still the religious ideal of 
the time, however far men might desire to carry church 
reform. It has been the ideal in our own day of such 
a liberal as Dr. Arnold. Puritan theocracy, though strict, 
and sure to melt away when the sun of freedom had 
mounted higher in the heaven, was not reactionary or 
obscurantist. It had for its rule the Bible, but the Bible 
interpreted by reason. It owed paramount allegiance 
not to authority but to truth. Robinson, the adored 
pastor of the Plymouth exiles, had charged them at part- 
ing, before God and all the angels, to "follow him no 
further than he followed Christ ; and if God should reveal 
anything to them by any other instrument of his, to be 
as ready to receive it as ever they were to receive any 
truth by his ministry ; for he was very confident the 
Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of 
His holy Word." Of light and truth to break forth from 
nature read by science beyond God's word the Puritan 
pastor in those days could have no thought. 



I. THE COLONIES. 11 

Reformers may wish to arrest reform at their own line, 
but they set in action the forces which will carry it 
further. The clergy were the leaders, to a considerable 
extent they were the masters, of the Puritan society and 
commonwealth. But they were not mere priests. They 
were well educated; some of them were very learned, 
and could not fail to have their share of the liberality of 
learning. Their ascendancy was moral and intellec- 
tual; it was not that of caste or of thaumaturg}-. 
Very early Massachusetts founded, out of her poverty le.so. 
and in troublous times, the University of Harvard, which 
is now tlie glory of the literary republic. Harvard's ITOO. 
present rival, Yale, was founded in New Haven later, 
yet at a date early as compared with the material 
progress of the colony. Massachusetts led the world 
in the institution of common schools, to which all citizens 
were required to contribute, and which all citizens were 
required to use. Common schools they were in the true 
sense of the term in that realm of equality, used as well 
as maintained by all. They would also be in the highest 
degree religious. The reason given for instituting them 
was that the children might be able to read the Scriptures 
aright, notwithstanding the wiles of Satan, whose favour- 
ite device was misinterpretation. But the effects of 
general education would not be limited by the ostensible 
purpose. Congregations were intelligent, and pastors 
could maintain their influence only by addressing them- 
selves to intelligence. A printing press, the first on the 
North American continent, was set up at Cambridge in 
1640. Its first fruit was a metrical version of the Psalms 
by some New England pastors which, if it was not tune- 
ful, was new and showed literary activit}', at least in 
the religious line. 



12 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

When the more advanced or wikler sectaries, to whom 
an age of religious fermentation gave birth in swarms, 
intruded themselves into the theocracy of Massachusetts, 
they were driven out. In this there could hardly be 
said to be injustice so long as there was no cruelty. 
The Puritans had gone out into the wilderness to found 
a religious commonwealth after their own hearts ; in 
founding it they had undergone great sufferings, and 
many of them had perished. It was their homestead, 
and they had a right to keep it, as they had a right to 
keep their places of worship, to themselves. This they 
did ; at the worst they never were guilty of forcible con- 
version, nor did they rack conscience like the Inquisition. 

1631. Of the intruders the most memorable was Roger 
Williams, a quick-witted, warm-hearted, and somewhat 
flighty Welshman, who came preaching absolute freedom 
of conscience, and denouncing theocratic government. A 
political as well as a religious innovator, he denied the 
right of the King to grant the land and thus impugned 
the titles of the colonists. In his zeal against idolatry lie 
compromised the loyalty of the colony by persuading the 
governor to cut the cross, as a Popish emblem, out of 

16.36. the flag. He was expelled after much tribulation, and 
went to found Rhode Island on the principle of perfect 
religious freedom and complete separation of church from 
state of which, partl}^ perhaps schooled by persecution, he 
had become the memorable champion. His colony may 
boast itself the first of all commonwealths in which liberty 
of conscience was the law. Its political disorders, the 
consequence of the motley enthusiasm which it drew 
to it, for a time furnished the theocracy against which 
its founder liad revolted with a theme for warning against 



I. THE COLONIES. 13 

religious anarchy. But the principle had been pro- 
claimed and Rhode Island was not long in showing the 
world that civil society could subsist and political order 
could be maintained without imposing shackles on spirit- 
ual life. 

Mrs. Ann Hutchinson also presented herself in Massa- 1634. 
chusetts. Her opinions appear to have been antinomian, 
certainly they were anti-clerical and anti-tlieocratic. From 
the active part which she took and the leadership to 
which she aspired, notwithstanding her sex, in theological 
agitation, she may be regarded as a harbinger of the 
"revolt of woman." She had evidently great power of 
winning disciples. Vane, who was in New England at 
the time, was di-awn to her; and it seems to have been 
partly in this way that he was led into an antagonism 
to the ruling party in Massachusetts which, combined 
probably with the attractions of the larger field, sent him 
back to the old countr3\ Mrs. Hutchinson also was 1637. 
banished. Samuel Gorton was another eccentric spirit 
who could not brook theocratic rule. He held among 
other heresies that there was no such place as heaven or 
hell, a doctrine for which the time was not ripe. Disturb- 
ing the existing order and defying the rulers, he, with 
his followers, was convicted of blasphemy and with more 
cruelty expelled. He carried his complaint to England, 1634. 
as afterwards did other sufferers by the rigour of theo- 
cracy, compromising thereby the cherished independence 
of Massachusetts. Baptists also when they found their 
wa}' into the colony were regarded and suffered as dis- 
turbers of religious order. They carried with them, 
however undeservedly, the taint of the social anarchy 
and war produced by the wild uprisings of the Ana- 
baptists in Europe. 



14 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

The worst case, and the shame of the theocracy, is 
1656 that of tlie Quakers. Quakers were not at first harmless 
1660. people of the inner light with a prim dress and a precise 
language of their own. They were sectaries of the 
wildest kind, and were sometimes guilty in their religious 
ecstasy of indecency and even of outrage. They railed 
against church authority ; they forced themselves into 
places of worship and disturbed the service ; they went 
about naked to testify against sin. A Quakeress in 
Massachusetts thrust herself upon a meeting house clad 
in sack cloth and with her face painted black to repre- 
sent the coming of the small-pox. Quakers were sternly 
bidden to depart ; laws making them liable to flogging 
and imprisonment, to the cropping of their ears, and the 
piercing of their tongues with hot irons, were passed 
and in some cases cruelly carried into execution. In 
defiance of these penalties they still came, till at last a 
law was passed banishing them on pain of death. They 
returned, eager for martyrdom, and four of them were 
hanged. But the touching demeanour of the sufferers 
moved the hearts of the people. Public sentiment re- 
volted. Public sentiment in Spain did not revolt against 
the autos-da-fe. The treatment of the Quakers by the 
Puritans is without defence or excuse, except such as 
the fallacies of the age, the fear that i^eligion would 
perish in an anarchy of sects, and Quaker extravagance, 
which seemed to menace social as well as religious order, 
might afford. But it is wrong to say that the Puritans 
of Massachusetts left the mother country to assert the 
principle of liberty of conscience and then shamefully 
violated that principle by their own practice. Tliey came 
out, not to assert liberty of conscience, a principle which 



I. THE COLONIES. 15 

had not dawned on their minds, but to found a religious 
commonwealth on their own model and in it live the 
spiritual life to which they aspired. Rhode Island, how- 
ever, had now an opportunity of showing her loyalty to 
her new born principle of religious freedom. To the 
appeal of Massachusetts for co-operation in putting down 
the Quakers the people of Rhode Island replied " that 
they had no law among them whereby to punish any for 
only declaring by words their minds and understandings 
concerning the things and ways of God as to salvation and 
an eternal condition," They admitted that the doctrines 
of the Quakers tended "to very absolute cutting down 
and overturning relations and civil government among 
men," but said that experience taught them that " in those 
places where these people aforesaid, in this Colony, are 
most of all suffered to declare themselves freely, and are 
only opposed by arguments and discourse, there they 
the least of all desire to come," inasmuch as they delight 
"to be persecuted by civil powers, and when they are 
so they are like to gain more adherence by the conceit 
of their patient sufferings than by consent to their per- 
nicious sayings." In one respect the Rhode Islanders 
were mistaken ; the Quakers remained among them and 
added to the disturbance of their settlement. Perhaps 
Massachusetts as the school of political and social order, 
and Rhode Island as the school of freedom of opinion, 
were unconsciously supplements of each other till the 
fulness of time in which the harmony of the two prin- 
ciples should be revealed. 

On its political side Puritanism was everywhere in 
spirit repul)lican, the tendency to political liberty going 
hand in hand with religious ir.dependence. The mon- 



16 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

archy, moreover, the court, and the aristocracy had been 
left on the other side of the Atlantic. Unlike the depen- 
dencies of Spain or France, Massachusetts was from the 
outset practically a republic, albeit retaining her alle- 
giance to the King of England, founding her rights upon 
his charter, included in his declarations of war and his 
treaties of peace, regarding his law as the basis of her 
own, and recognizing his privy council as her ultimate 
court of appeah Her polity was based on the town- 
ship, that elementary cell and school of public life about 
which much has been said by De Tocqueville and other 
political philosophers. The townships were afterwards 
gathered into counties, forming another step in the 
ascending scale of self-government. At the centre was 
an elective and representative assembly. The execu- 
tive was an elective Governor. Representation went 
with taxation. But the republic was not at first demo- 
cratic. Its chiefs in fact repudiated democracy as not a 
fit government either for church or state. They asked, 
if the people were to govern, who was to be governed? 
Some of them would fain have had all offices held for 
life. Winthrop and Dudley did actually enjoy almost 
a life term. There was no idle aristocracy ; all alike 
were workers, but social distinctions were kept up. The 
order of gentlemen was recognized, it was exempted from 
corporal punishment, the title of Mr. was confined to 
it, " Goodman " being the title of a commoner. The 
principal families had the chief seats in church ; their 
sons ranked first among the students at Harvard. " Con- 
cerning liberty," said Governor Winthrop in a homily 
against democratic turbulence, " I observe a great mistake 
in the country. There is a twofold liberty, natural (1 



I. THE COLONIES. 17 

mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil, or federal. 
The first is common to man with beasts and other 
creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation to man, 
simply hath liberty to do what he lists ; it is a liberty to 
evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and 
inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure the least 
restraint of the most just authority. The exercise and 
maintaining of this liberty makes men to grow more 
evil, and, in time, to be worse than brute beasts : omnes 
sumus licentia deteriores — we all become worse by licence. 
That is the great enemy of truth and peace, that wild 
beast, which all the laws of God are bent against, to 
restrain and subdue it. The other kind of liberty I call 
civil or federal ; it may also be called moral in reference 
to the covenant between God and man in the moral 
law, and the political covenants and constitutions among 
men themselves. This liberty is the proper end and 
object of authority, and cannot subsist without it, and 
it is a liberty to that only which is just, good, and honest. 
This liberty you are to stand for at the hazard not only 
of your goods, but of your lives, if need be. Whatsoever 
crosseth this is not authority, but a distemper thereof. 
This liberty is maintained and exercised in a way of 
subjection to authority ; it is of the same kind of liberty 
wherewith Christ hath made us free." Such, expressed 
by the highest Puritan authority, was the principle of the 
Puritan commonwealth. Authority was surrounded with 
as much state as the infant colony could afford. The 
Governor, it seems, was preceded by four halberdiers. 
When Lord Say-and-Sele, Lord Brooke, and other Puri- 
tan noblemen thought of coming out from England, 
they proposed that Massachusetts should institute an 



18 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

liereditaiy order of nobility forming an Upper House. 
But this the commonwealth respectfully declined. She 
answered by the hand of Cotton, " When God blesseth 
any branch of any noble or generous family with a spirit 
and gifts fit for government, it would be a taking of 
God's name in vain to put such a talent under a bushel, 
and a sin against the honour of magistracy to neglect such 
in our public elections. But if God should not delight 
to furnish some of their posterity with gifts fit for magis- 
tracy, we should expose them rather to reproach and 
prejudice, and the commonwealth Avith them, than exalt 
them to honour, if we should call them forth, when God 
doth not, to public authority." Thus gently but deci- 
sively did the new world break with hereditary govern- 
ment, and commit itself to the principle of election. But 
aristocracy, had it been planted in New England, could 
never have taken root. In the colony there were no great 
estates to support peerages. Of the equal comradeship 
of Saxon rovers English self-government was born ; in 
the equal partnership of religious colonists after a thou- 
sand years of monarchy and aristocracy it was renewed. 
1627. The Company having been transferred from England to 
Massachusetts, no tie to England was left but that of al- 
legiance to the king. Though the Puritan republic was 
not in its birth democratic, democracy was not long in 
raising its head and foreshadowing its destined empire. 
Town meetings were pretty certain to breed village poli- 
ticians, while the common schools would foster equality. 
Elections were by the democratic mode of ballot. We see 
the rudiment of a democratic caucus. Self-taxation is the 
political lever of democracy, and New Englanders jeal- 
ously refused to pay any taxes without representation. It 



THE Cr)Lt)NIES. 19 

wad a democratic spirit that demanded a written, code of 
laws instead of Mosaic principles administered at the dis- 
cretion of the general court. It was a dem.ocratic spirit 
that successfullj protested against life-tenure of office. A 
change in the constitntion dividing the general court, 
which had been a single council, into two branches, one 
of which was popular, had its origin in a clemocratiG 
agitation caused bv what tKe people resented as an oligar- 
chical decision of the coun.cil in the great case of Mrs. 
Sherman's sow. We have here a glimmering of the 
conflict to come in after times between the '*" classes " and 
the '•'■ masses." "- He," Mrs. Sherman's antagonist in th.e 
suit, " being accounted a rich man and she a poor woman, 
this so wrought with the people, as being blinded with 
unreasonable compassion, they could not see or would not 
allow justice her reasonable course." These are the words 
of a governor opposed to democracy, yet they are likely to 
have been true. A feeling of the deputies of the town- 
ships against the central power, likewise premonitory in 
its way, seems also to have played its part. To the 
learned and revered Cotton, who held that democracy 
was not a fit government for church or state, was opposed 
the learned and revered Thomas Hooker, who maintained 
that " the foundation of authority ia laid in the free con- 
sent of the people, that the choice of the public magistrates 
belongs to the people of God's own allowance, and that 
they who have the power to appoint officers and magis- 
trates have the right also to set the bounds and limitationa 
of the power and place unto which they call them." 
These sentiments Hooker and his friends embodied in the 
constitution of Connecticut, a settlement which was in 
some measure a democratic secession from Massachusetts, 



20 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

and may thus claim to be the cradle of American demo- 
cracy as Rhode Island may claim to be the cradle of liberty 
of conscience. The constitution of Connecticut has been 
pronounced the first written constitution known to history 
which created a government. This assertion may be a 
little hazardous with regard to ancient Greece and Rome, 
possibly with regard to the Italian republics ; it is certainly 
true with regard to America. It is true, and it is highly 
important. We have passed from the world of unwritten 
to that of written constitutions, from a world of govern- 
ment by usage, tradition, and chartered privileges wrested 
from kings, to a world of government by public reason 
embodied in codes of political law. 

In 1642 the federal principle appears on the scene where 
it was destined in the fulness of time to receive its grand- 
est application. A federation was formed of the four 
colonies then in existence ; Massachusetts, Plymouth, 
Connecticut, and New Haven. The motive was the same 
which has given birth to confederations in general, mutual 
defence against hostile force ; the hostile force in this case 
being that of the Dutch who pressed from the south, and 
that of the French Canadians who pressed from the north, 
while there was always danger from the Indians. In the 
instrument of federation the language used implied the 
possession by the contracting parties of independent and 
sovereign power, such as would enable them to make 
peace and war. The difficulties of the system were 
illustrated by the jealousies and disputes which arose 
notwithstanding the simple nature in this case of the 
federal functions and the strong inducement to unanimity 
afforded by common peril. Light was thrown, too, on the 
conditions requisite for federation, which seems to be ap- 
plicable oidy to a group of states, nearly equal or so 



I. THE COLONIES. 21 

Ijalanced as to preclude the domination of any one state 
and the jealousies which such domination or the appre- 
hension of it excites. Massachusetts, being much larger 
and stronger than her three sisters, and naturally claiming 
influence in proportion to her contribution, domineered, 
or was believed by her partners to domineer, and instead 
of harmonious action there was strife. 

The belief that the scriptures contained the rule of civil 
as well as that of spiritual life, coupled with the belief 
that the Old Testament was of equal authority with the 
New, could not fail to sit heavy on the Puritans of New 
England, as well as those of the mother country. Their 
legislation was tainted with Mosaism. Blasphemy, witch- 
craft, adultery, smiting or cursing parents, were treated 
as capital crimes, though we have no record of an inflic- 
tion of the death penalty for blasphemy, adultery, or 
filial rebellion. For death as the punishment in the 
case of adultery was afterwards substituted a milder 
penalty, a part of which was the wearing of the scarlet 
letter A as a mark of infamy. Sabbath-breaking was 
punished with extreme severity. It is the inherent 
tendency of theocracy to deal with sins as crimes. But 
in the framing of the code, with the spirit of Mosaism 
incarnate in Cotton and the ministers, a part was taken 
by the spirit of law-reform, embodied in Ward, a clergy- 
man who in England had been bred to the law. The 
code of Massachusetts and those of other New England 
colonies are on the whole a great improvement on those 
of the mother country in humanity and civilization. 
Their use of the death penalty is sparing indeed com- 
pared with the use of it in the code of the mother country, 
where at last there were a hundred and sixty capital 



32 1 .. : -lEP STATES. ok, 

offetkees. ^ " to animals "wras forbidden. Thoiii:-- 
equaHtT d:.. - . .: fullr mgn, there Tras enough of :: 
TO T^^^v^TiT ar!<toeraiie jvn>digalitT of the Wood of thr 
pcv I for debt ^ras disoaided. The e:> 

:> of the pleading system \reTe relaxei. 

3M1- _i ._:.,.. ... :^ framed, -wrhieh being rational and 
inteDigiKr, "was an itn^'T'^v^eiuent npon the chaotic ped- 
astnr of English r, while the great tmder- 

1 j-mg prmripitPis o: ' ~th them the 

£a^l^^h li^ht *?" ^ - . . - . ... , .^. The arisio- 

ezstie righ^ •:'. ^ :tit^ in sneeession to estates 

ir»B reducer Women were protected 

agaiBSl 1^ TL A a share of 

•fjKa "hTisTsn ''- _ Tido^r. Such 

r-Tirms C: - - ie in England 

lad he been aUe to overc-onie the interested piejndiees 
cf Ids lawyas. T f marriage, which the 

Pariiaa deeac^" .- was tiansferred from 

die dJei^TnazL Barfaaioiis punishments, 

SBcli as floss^ii . stocks, tongue-boring, 

aad car-cr . r snii in Togue. Civilization had 

mamheste i. - - -v ,^ Sew Haven was some- 

lee. what Bwre :han Boston. It had been 

foiOBdal t; 3*j6t<m was too little Puritan, 

and who irerv C3bl-:»i t^ :*f the sect. Its chief 

raleis •wen '~-' ■ "7 ~=-" and it rejected 

jsTf trial riptures. " Xever 

dsewfeere- I believe-~ say? I 3- ~ has the world seen 

BL .: thej were God's 

kl: God*- '- — '--'-: most 

fc. 1^ to E- .uron 

the part "s. to keeping sospicious company on 



I. THE COLONIES. 23 

the Lord's day, and to kissing. But it is not to be sup- 
posed that the scriptural ideal which these pious people 
embodied in their enactments could be literally carried 
into effect. The Blue Laws of Connecticut are at all 
events a fable. When no government was free from 
fallacy the fruits must be judged by comparison. Under 
tlie disciijline of Puritan theocracy, combined with the 
training of industiy and of bold seafaring, the foundations 
of a strong character were laid. 

The Puritan colonists had begun with the common 
ownership of land. They soon found that common owner- 
ship meant common neglect and hunger, as had the col- 
onists of Virginia till a leader by sheer force compelled 
them to work. They then divided the land into lots, 
after which industry became strenuous, and there was 
food enough. Some common land, however, was retained, 
and the lovely public gardens of Boston are a monument 
of the primitive system. An attempt was made to regu- 
late the rate of wages, and when the wage-earners com- 
plained of their reduced power of purchasing, an attempt 
was made to regulate prices also. Even under a theo- 
cracy both experiments failed. Thus these pioneers of 
trade and industry in their day " relegated political 
economy to Saturn," and found that it returned. A 
better measure was the enactment that no house should 
be built at more than a certain distance from a place of 
worship. If the primary object of this law was ecclesias- 
tical it brought with it the economical and moral advan- 
tages of close settlement, it favoured the growth of 
towns, and, therefore, of social and political life. 

Life was of course austere. Much in which ^Merry 
Eno-land delisfhted and mioht well delisrht was forbidden. 



24 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

There were no May-poles nor Christmas pies. There was 
no theatre ; the acting even of " Comus " would not have 
been endured. There were no drinkings of healths, and 
of course no cards nor dice. On the other hand there was 
no bear-baiting, no cock-fighting, no cocking on Shrove 
Tuesday, no beastly drinking bout, no beating of watch- 
men, no outrage of aristocratic Mohocks. There were 
social meetings for the young, such as raising bees and 
sewing bees. There seems even to have been dancing. 
Neither in respect of food nor in respect of drink was 
Puritanism ascetic. Its preachers had their casks of rum 
or brandy. Thanksgiving Day, its chief festival in the 
new world, was probably kept with as good cheer as the 
prelatical Christmas. Frugality as well as religious prin- 
ciple would check excess of all kinds even when riches 
had increased, else denial of amusement is apt to lead to 
greater indulgence in the pleasures of the table. Gaiety 
of apparel was discouraged, but on the Sabbath all ap- 
peared in their best clothes. Military drill and muster, 
which the neighbourhood of the Indians and the hostile 
Dutch and French always enforced and to which all citi- 
zens were bound, besides keeping up manly vigour, would 
be a thread of variety and picturesqueness in the sad- 
coloured web of existence. Still, New England life must 
have been austere. Nor can the danger of moral reaction 
against over-strictness and formality have been absent. 
The religious exercises were such as would far surpass our 
powers of pious endurance. Could any but the liveliest 
faith have drunk in with delight the interminable sermon 
of a Calvinistic pastor in an unwarmed meeting house 
with temperature below zero? However, the faith of 
these men was the liveliest, and they did fully believe 



I. THE COLONIES. 25 

that the world m which they practised this self-denial and 
patiently listened to these discourses was the threshold of 
a home prepared for the saints in heaven. 

New England was not free from the stain of slavery. 
The law of Massachusetts said, "There shall be no bond- 
slavery, villainage, or captivity amongst us unless it be 
lawful captives taken in just wars and such strangers as 
willingly sell themselves or are sold to us." This licences 
slavery and the slave trade, though the provision which 
grants to the slave " all the liberties and Christian usages 
which the law of God established in Israel," the Hebrew 
code having been merciful for its day, would render slavery 
in New England comparatively mild. Slavery was sanc- 
tioned by the Bible ; that was enough for the Puritan, 
who knew nothing about evolution or the education of 
the human race, and whose Christianity had not recog- 
nized the equal humanity of the heathen. Ships from New 
England took part in the slave trade, though the members 
of the religious commonwealth who made a murderous 
raid upon an African village on the Sabbath were brought 
to justice for their double crime. Fortunately for New 
England, she had no industry like that of cotton, tobacco, 
or rice, in which slave laboui- could be profitably employed. 
Slaves do not make good husbandmen or seamen. 

Relations with the aborigines are a sad page in the 
history of colonies. At the time of American secession 
the charge was revived against the New England Puri- 
tans of exterminating the natives on a hideous scale. 
The number of savages who wandered over those ex- 
panses seems to have been really small, nor were they 
exterminated, though they were decimated by war and, 
perhaps still more, by the contraction of their hunting- 



26 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

grounds and their adoption of white vices. Indian tribes 
were always carrying on wars of extermination against 
each other. In their conduct towards the savages with 
whom they came into contact, the Puritans may at least 
challenge comparison with the conduct of the Spanish 
Catholics towards the far more civilized people of the 
same race who were found in Mexico and South America. 
In their first advances the new-comers showed a wish 
for peace and justice. For the seed corn which they had 
taken from an Indian store they tendered fair compen- 
sation. Compensation of some sort was made for the 
lands taken from the natives, though while on the one 
hand mere roaming over a vast region could hardly make 
the Indian hunter its proprietor, on the other nothing 
could compensate the wandering hunter for the loss 
of the wilderness and the game. Nor did the settlers 
ever cease to recognize the Indian as a man having a 
right to justice against the Englishman. The missionary 
efforts of Eliot were fully as noble as those of Las Casas 
or the Jesuits, while they were not, like those of the 
Jesuits, tainted with an equivocal ambition. He could 
number several thousand Indian converts, some hundreds 
of whom had learned to read a language reduced by 
him to writing. His Indian Bible was an almost super- 
IGGI. human monument of philanthropic labour. He strove 
to combine civilization with conversion, and aimed at 
making his converts men, not sheep. But the Red Indian 
in reality, though not in the romance of Fenimore Cooper, 
was of all savages the most irreclaimable. Wild virtues, 
notably fortitude, he had, as well as keenness of sense 
and power of endurance, but his life was full of slaughter 
and rapine, his cruelty was fiendish. In the Iroquois 



I. THE COLOXTES. 27 

the devilish lust of blood and torture was so ingrained, 
and was combined with so much cunning and perfidy, 
that it was scarcely possible to deal with him otherwise 
than as with the most dangerous and untameable of 
wild beasts. On the border no one could sleep secure 
aofainst the sudden onslauo-ht of the sayao-e witli the 
tomahawk and the firebrand. While the congregation 
was in church, armed men stood guard at tlie door. 
The Puritan also had his cruel moods, and his notions 
about smiting the Canaanite in New England as well as 
in Ireland. He was in one of those moods when, in the 1G37. 
Pequod war, he destroyed, in one holocaust, four hundred 
Indians, men, women, and children. Yet more terrible 1674-6. 
was the war in later days against the Indian chief called 
King Philip, who, as the colonists belieyed, had been 
forming a league to driye them out of the land. This 
war lasted for two years, during which nearly two-thirds 
of the eighty or ninet}' towns of Massachusetts were 
raided b}" the savages, ten or twelve were totally de- 
stroyed, and ten per cent of the men of military age 
were killed in fight or carried off to be tortured to death. 
Piteous is the tale of a matron who was led into captivity 
with her wounded child. A desperate heroism was bred 
b}' these struggles in the women as well as in the men. 
Hannah Dustin, being carried off with her nurse and 
a white boy, got the white boy to join her, rose in the 
night, killed the Indians with their own tomahawks, 
scalped them, and made her way back a hundred miles 
to her home. No wonder if disturbed fancy added its 
terrors to those of reality, if Indian bows were seen in 
the sky and scalps in the moon, if the aurora borealis 
was taken for a blood-red portent of coming war. No 



28 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

wonder if the Puritan conscience was alarmed and looked 
for causes of divine wrath in curled hair and ribbons, 
naked breasts and arms, swearing and tippling, suspicious 
ridings of youths and maidens to town under pretence of 
attending lectures, hurrying away from meeting before 
blessing asked, and toleration of Quakers. It is marvel- 
lous, and creditable to the Puritan religion that the 
humanity of the colonists did not altogether give way. 
A solution of the fatal problem by a mixture of the 
races was out of the question. The marriage of Poca- 
hontas with the Virginian Rolfe, hailed as auspicious 
at the time, had no sequel. Few were the inter-marriages 
between the whites and the Indians, though Indian blood, 
instead of being deemed, like negro blood, a disgrace, has 
been rather a subject of pride among Americans, and 
one of the most eminent of Virginian politicians was fond 
of reminding his hearers that it ran in his veins. The 
higher the race is, the less does it mingle with lower 
races. The Anglo-Saxon is to lower races a ruler, and in 
dealing with them his exclusiveness is at once his strength 
and his weakness. 

Massachusetts always professed allegiance to the British 
Crown, which, and not Parliament, it must be remem- 
bered, in those days was, or was taken to be, the real 
government ; in other respects she always bore herself as 
an independent and almost sovereign commonwealth. 
She made war and peace ; she formed a confederation ; 
she taxed herself, paying no tribute of any kind; she 
coined her own money, the pine-tree shilling; she dealt 
freely with her own constitution ; she framed her own 
code of laws, including the law of capital punishment, | 
though as a general basis the English common law pre- 



I. THE COLONIES. 29 

vailed. She framed her own treason law, enacting that 
if any man should rebel or conspire against the common- 
wealth, or should attempt the alteration or subversion of 
her fundamental government, he should suffer death. 
This practically puts the commonwealth in the place of 
the king; had such been the treason law of England 
there would have been no difficulty in framing the in- 
dictment of Strafford. When there was any attempt on 
the part of the home government actually to enforce the 
obedience of the colony, the colonists met it with sage 
diplomacy, fortified by fasting and prayer. The distance 
from the imperial country favoured the tactics of delay. 
It furnished also a conclusive plea for military indepen- 
dence. " If we in America," said Winthrop, " should 
forbear to unite for offence and defence against a com- 
mon enemy till we have leave from England, our throats 
might be all cut before the messenger could be half seas 
through." The smaller Puritan colonies in Rhode 
Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, pervaded by 
the same spirit as Massachusetts, like her were bent on 
enjoying practical independence. They, especially Rhode 
Island, had less difficulty in obtaining a large measure of 
it, since the Crown was inclined to make them its allies 
against Massachusetts, whose ambitious aspirations and 
hostility to Episcopalianism, the royal religion, combined 
with its power, gave special umbrage to the Crown. 
There is always the same strain upon the bond, false 
from the beginning, between the dependent colony and 
the mother country ; and the stronger and more self 
reliant is the colony, the greater is the strain. 

As Protestants militant the New Englanders were bound 
up with the fortunes of their cause in Europe. With 



30 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

eager eyes they liad watched the victorious career of 
Gustavus Adolphus. With eyes still more eager would 
they watch the struggle in their mother couutiy between 
high church despotism and protestant liberty. They tri- 
umphed in the victory of the Parliament. Yet they were 
careful in their relations with the Parliament not to com- 
promise their own independence. Presbyterianism, domi- 
nant for the time in England, and believing as firmly as 
did Popery or Anglicanism in its divine origin, would fain 
have extended its dominion to the colonies. A synod of 
the Massachusetts churches was held and the Westminster 
Confession was approved, but the Congregational theocracy 
of New England underwent no change. The policy of the 
Protector towards the colonists was large-minded and 
liberal. He offered them, instead of their niggard soil 
and chilly climate, the rich and sunny Jamaica. At 
another time he proposed to transplant them to Ireland, j 
Happily they declined both offers. In Jamaica they would | 
have sunk into slave-owners ; in Ireland they would have I 
had to make room for themselves by smiting the Canaan- 
ites of that land with the edge of the sword. New Eng- 
land accepted the Restoration, but did not welcome it. 
1661. After more than a year's delay Charles II was proclaimed 
at Boston, but to drink his health was not allowed ; his 
Majesty himself having strictly forbidden it, as the rulers, 
by a pious fiction, declared. The colony gave an asylum 
to the regicides Whalley, Goffe, and Dixwell, who, hunted | 
by royal emissaries, were sheltered by popular sympathy. 
A cave near New Haven is still shown as the refuge of 
Goffe and Whalle}^ Tradition makes Goffe suddenly 
appear on the scene to rally a party of colonists who were 
hard pressed in fight by Indians, and who took the mys- 



I. THE COLONIES. 31 

terious stranger for an angel sent to their rescue. Con- 
necticut and Rhode Ishmd were, as usual, more prompt in 
their submission than Massachusetts, and the roj-al coun- 
tenance beamed on them accordingly. 

By this time, however, a change had come over the 
spirit of Massachusetts herself. Trade had grown active, 
wealth had increased, and there had arisen a class more 
commercial than religious, which lusted after the flesh- 
pots, material and social, of the Roj^al and Anglican 
Egypt. Against austerity, often tainted with conceit and 
sometimes with hypocrisy, a reaction was sure to take 
place like that of the Restoration against the reign of the 
saints in England. The root of colonial Puritanism in the 
mother country was dead, for Puritanism of the genuine 
kind ended there with the Restoration, and nothing 
remained but the far less lofty and energetic spirit of 
political non-conformity. Trade had brought a mixed 
population. The theocratic burghers were a minority, 
according to the excluded a mere fraction of the commu- 
nity, and their political privileges had become an object 
of just jealousy and hatred to those who were excluded 
from the pale. Among the new-comers were members of 
the Anglican Church who demanded liberty for their re- 
ligion. It must not be left out of sight that in some sort 
religious liberty in Massachusetts looked to the English 
monarchy for protection and thus justified the interference 
of the home government. Ungodl}^ wealth looked wist- 
fully at the pomp and trappings of British monarchy 
and aristocracy. Political and religious malcontents alike. 
Royalists, Episcopalians, Baptists, and Quakers, turned 
their eyes to Westminster and there urged their com- 
plaints and carried on their intrigues. The germs of 



32 THE UNITED STATES. chap, 

the Tory and Whig parties of the Revolution had been 
formed. This invited the despotic aggression of the later 
Stuarts. The colonial government seems to have felt its 
weakness, since upon the arrival of the news of the Res- 
toration and of the complaints lodged against it in Eng- 
land it sent to Charles II an apologetical address in which 
the colony was designated as "the King's poor Mephi- 
bosheth, by reason of lameness in respect of distance not 
until now appearing in his presence, kneeling with the 
rest of his subjects before His Majesty as her restored 
King." The pine-tree shilling being an offensive token 
of monetary independence, the pine was ingenuously 
passed off as the royal oak. But the storm was not 
averted by loyal language or by a condemnation of Eliot's 
republican treatise on the " Commonwealth," which, in 
some degree, reminds us of the tributes paid to monarchy 
in the condemnation of republican writings by loyal 
universities in England. The agents of Massachusetts 
brought back with them a royal missive demanding the 
repeal of all laws inconsistent with the King's authority, 
the administration of justice in his name, the renewal of 
the oath of allegiance, the substitution of property quali- 
fications for church membership as the title to the fran- 
chise and to office, and the admission of all people of 
honest views to baptism and the Lord's Supper; the two 
last articles importing nothing less than the abolition of 
theocracy. Thus in the colony, as in the mother country, 
the Romanizing Stuart figured in a sinister way as the 
patron of toleration. The Quakers, however, though the 
King at first gave ear to their complaints, obtained little 
relief in the end. They filled the Stuarts' own prisons. 
Permission was given to make a sharp law against them. 



I. THE COLONIES. 33 

and the sliarp law was executed on two young married 
Quakeresses, who walked naked through the streets in 
imitation of the prophet Ezekiel, as a sign of the naked- 
ness of the land. Royalty had in the colony its party 
arrayed against the zealous defenders of the theocracy, 
and headed by Joseph Dudley, son of the stern Puritan 
Governor, but himself a shifty politician, the counterpart 
of the Lauderdales and Shaftesburys of the mother coun- 
try. Besides the threatened change in her constitution, 
Massachusetts was menaced with a blow to her terri- 
torial ambition by a decision adverse to her aggrandize- 
ment in Maine, the proprietary colony of Sir Ferdinando 
Gorges which she had been striving to appropriate. Relief 
from pressure was probably afforded to the colony by the 
reaction against the court in England consequent on the 
t Popish Plot, which gave birth to the Exclusion Bill. 
But when the- court had triumphed over the opposition, 
and was sending the Whig leaders to the scaffold, prayers, 
money — the effect of which upon the courtiers seems 
now to have been tried — and partial submission proved 
alike unavailing any longer to avert the impending blow. 
A quo warranto went forth ; the charter of Massachusetts, 
like the charters of the English municipalities, was an- 
nulled ; and, by a colourable process of law, for the later 
Stuarts did everything in form of law, the commonwealth 
was reduced to a dependency under the arbitrary power of 
the Crown, which by the same act became again lord of all 
the land, and had the title of every freeholder legally at its 
mercy. Under James II the colony narrowly escaped 
having the sanguinary Kirke as its Governor, 
mund Andros came out in that capacity^ 
the spirit of his master. He appeared as 




c^ 



34 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

whole of New England, and apparently as destined Gov- 
ernor-General of all the colonies. Under him as president of 
the council was Joseph Dudley, playing Sunderland to the 
viceroy of James 11. Andros, like his master, assumed 
the despot. He levied arbitrary taxes, he compelled 
freeholders to purchase new patents for their lands, and 
if they complained he told them, with the insolence of 
another Jeffreys, by the mouth of his deputy, that they 
had nothing left them except the privilege of not being 
sold as slaves. He killed liberty in its source by putting 
an end to the freedom of the press and making the obse- 
quious Dudley censor. He forcibly introduced the Church 
of England, seized a meeting house for its prelatical 
services, and caused the Anglican surplice to be dis- 
played before the eyes of the scandalized Puritans. He 
took away the celebration of marriages from the magis- 
trates and confined it to Episcopal clergymen, of whom 
there was only one in the colony. To bring Connecticut 
under his despotism he went to Hartford and demanded 
the surrender of the charter, but the discussion lasting 
into the night the lights were suddenly put out and in 
the darkness the precious document disappeared and was 
hidden in an oak which became sacred as the Charter 
Oak. It seems wonderful that there was no serious 
resistance except in New Hampshire, where the people 
rose against arbitrary taxation, that capital grievance 
which, even under the Tudors, English blood would not 
endure. But the party of liberty in England was pros- 
trate ; the trade of the colony and its seaboard towns 
lay at the mercy of the royal fleet; nor was the king 
without partisans where, as at home, he could play, pend- 
ing the re-installation of his own persecuting religion, 



ii. THE COLONIES. 35 

the part of a protector against persecution. He could 
look also for some support to Connecticut and Rhode 
Island, always jealous of their too powerful sister; while 
Rhode Island was mortally opposed to a theocracy such 
as still struggled for life in Massachusetts. One day, 
however, there sailed into Boston harbour an English 
ship bringing the glad tidings of the Revolution and the 
order to proclaim William and Mary. That order was 
joyfully obeyed. Andros fell like Jeffreys, and like 
Jeffreys had a narrow escape from popular vengeance. 

William III had saved the liberties of Europe from 
Louis XIV. But his own trade was to be a king, and he 
soon had a Tory Parliament. After some deliberation he 1692. 
restored the charter of Massachusetts, not, however, with- 
out serious changes. The governor was thenceforth to be 
appointed by the king, not elected by the people. Tol- 
eration was secured to all religions except the Roman 
Catholic. The qualification for the franchise was to be 
property, not church membership. This was the legal end 
of the theocracy, though practically the theocratic influ- 
ence still held its ground in the government, and moulded 
laws as well as manners, while the Congregational minis- 
try remained on something like the footing of an estab- 
lished clergy supported by general contributions. The 
press, without formal emancipation, slipped its neck out 
of the yoke of the censorship much as it did in England. 
That tlie counter revolution was not violent in the colony 
any more than in the mother country is shown by tlie re- 
tention of Dudley, the friend of prerogative, in office. 

Other foes of theocracy, however, more powerful than 
the legal enactments of the English king and parliament, 
were now at work. The system had served as the mould 



36 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

of New England character and institutions. The Puritan- 
ism whicli was its informing spirit was now rapidly dying 
in the colony, as after the fall of the Commonwealth it 
had died in the mother country. Surviving forms of 
enthusiasm had become hollow ; people could no longer 
be brought to recount their spiritual experiences to their 
fellows. To meet the wants of citizens whose parents had 
contrived, against the strict rule, to have them baptized, 
but who did not inherit the zeal essential to a full partici- 
pation in church ordinances and life, " half-way com- 
munion " was, to the dismay of the saints, introduced. 
Of the saints themselves the more politic, including Cot- 
ton Mather, had at last to consent to the compromise. 
Trade brought immigrants of different religions who could 
not, like Roger Williams and the Quakers, be cast out. 
Wealth inclined to the doctrinal laxity and practical in- 
dulgence as well as to the liturgical pomp and aristocratic 
associations of the Episcopal church. The Baptists set up 
an altar against God's altar and would not allow it to be 
pulled down. Close at hand was Rhode Island, alwaj^s 
proclaiming liberty of conscience ; and if her principle 
was somewhat discredited by political disorder, its enun- 
ciation could not fail to tell on free spirits. In Boston at 
this time, according to Dunton, a roving bookseller, there 
were thirteen bookstores, a formidable mine under the 
foundations of the theocratic edifice. The ministers were 
not field preachers ; they received a learned education at 
Harvard, and with learning the spirit of inquiry found its 
way. Latitudinarianism began to creep in. Presently 
Unitarianism raised its head, and in time possessed itself 
of the government of the University. Even Rationalism, 
or a tendency which the Calvinist would deem rational- 



THE C(JLONIES. 37 

istic, to limit the domain of the supernatural, was gaining 
ground. Perception of the invisible world grew faint as 
interest in the visible world grew strong. Not that Cal- 
vinism died out ; many years afterwards it shot up with 
almost terrific force and under its grimmest aspect in the 
predestinarian writings of Jonathan Edwards and in the 
revival of which he was the chief. 

It was, perhaps, fear that the belief in the supernatural, 
and notably in the supernatural agency of the Evil One, 
was dying out which led Cotton Mather, a minister of 
prodigious though ill-digested learning and at the same 
time full of spiritual self-conceit, to countenance the hor- 
rible delusion of Salem witchcraft which has left a dark 
stain on New England history, as readers of Hawthorne's 
" House of the Seven Gables " know. Belief in witchcraft 
was an hallucination common to all the churches, and in 
all of them it had led to judicial murder. In the Church 
of Rome it had led to judicial murder on the largest scale. 
No one, not even Blackstone, who believed that the Pen- 
tateuch was literally inspired, could deny the reality of 
the crime. Salem, the chief scene of these horrors, was 1392. 
the original seat of the Massachusetts Bay colony, and 
over its quiet streets the spirit of primitive Puritanism 
jstill broods. An epidemic of disease had predisposed the 
minds of the people to an epidemic of superstition. Nine- 
teen persons were put to death on charges as fantastic as 
a lunatic's visions, and chiefly on the evidence of wicked 
or perverted children whose cunning and persistency in 
their fabrications are not the least remarkable part of the 
episode. One man who was eighty years of age refusing 
to plead, that he might save the inheritance of his chil- 
dren, suffered the penalty of the peine forte et dure^ being 



38 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

pressed to death with heavy weights. Even to Harvard 
College the tide of delusion seems to have extended. 
Then came a revulsion of public feeling. The demeanour 
of some of the victims touched the feelings and shook the 
convictions of the people. Of the authors of the persecu- 
tion, some repented. Judge Sewall stood up in church 
while his declaration of contrition was read. Cotton 
Mather remained impenitent and probably was only con- 
firmed in his obduracy by the arguments of Calef, am 
unlearned but vigorous theologian who attacked the; 
whole belief. Cotton Mather afterwards partly redeemed I 
himself by countenancing, at a great sacrifice of his pop-- 
ularity and at some risk of his life, the introduction off 
inoculation, which excited the ignorant fury of the mob.. 
Even in him learning begot something of liberality. . 
Judge Sewall also redeemed himself by taking up hiss 
parable against slavery. 

Godliness, even the strictest Puritan godliness, had I 
not interfered with material progress. Through the tem-- 
perance, industry, and frugality which it bred, the other r 
things were added to it. The Canaan of the Puritan i 
exiles was not a land flowing with milk and honey.. 
Though the Virginian exaggerated who said that in New?/ 
England you had to put in a herring head with every 
stalk of corn to make it grow, much of the soil was 5 
niggard. The American farmer is now deserting it fori 
the fertile expanses of the West. The climate, too, was'^ 
rigorous. That land may almost rank with the marshes 
of Holland and the lagoons of Venice as a stern nurse 
of the industrial virtues. Yet New England raisedl 
enough to supply with farm products not only herselfl 
but the West Indies. There was ship timber of the best,, 



I. THE COLONIES. 39 

such as furnished the finest masts for the " tall amirals " 
of the royal fleet. There were abundant fisheries both 
of cod and whale. All these advantages the New Eng- 
landers improved to the utmost. They supplied England 
with timber and marine stores, grew rich and, at the 
same time, became hardy and adventurous seamen. Pop- 
ulation increased. Signs of opulence appeared. Houses 
with seven gables were built. An austere richness marked 
furniture and apparel. Highways were improved. Snug 
little inns were opened. The printing press was active, 
though chiefly in the theological line. There was as 
yet hardly a legal profession. The people had hitherto 
been judged not by men learned in the laws, but by the 
magistrate, as they had been in Israel. That there were 
physicians we know from an ordinance against quackery, 
though regular medicine was little better than regular 
quackery in those days. 



Meantime, far to the South and for some time separated 
from New England by a Dutch plantation, in a land and 
an air physically more genial, morally less happy, another 
group of communities had been growing up. These were 
colonies of the same mother country as New England, 
but widely different from her in religious, social, and 
political character, destined presently to be joined to her 
in an ill-starred union, then to come to an inevitable rup- 
ture with the confederation of which she was the soul, 
and after a desperate struggle to be subjugated and 
re-annexed. New England was the leading shoot, the 
moulding force, the prevailing spirit; but Virginia, the 
queen of the southern group, was the elder colony. 



40 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

1585-7. Virginia, as we have seen, had been saved when on the 
point of extinction by John Smith, a true Elizabethan 
hero and not the least bright star of the constellation, 
though, like Raleigh and the rest, he was probably not 
of the regular type of virtue, nor free from a boastfulness 
which scorned the limits of fact. This man knew what 
a colony was and how it differed from a gold-hunt. 
" Who," he asked, " can desire more content that hath 
small means, or but only his merits to advance his for- 
tunes, than to tread and plant that ground he hath 
purchased by the hazard of his life ? If he have but the 
taste of virtue and magnanimity, what to such a mind 
can be more pleasant than planting and building a founda- 
tion for his posterity, got from the rude earth by God's 
blessing and his own industry without prejudice to any?" 
Smith departed under a cloud of sorrow, but he had 
triumphed. The Virginia Company sent out supplies 
and re-inforcements, above all a cargo of maids as wives 
for the settlers, and the colony struggled into permanent 
1610. existence. Then came Lord Delaware as governor with 
a state rather beyond the needs and means of the colony, 
whereat rough settlers grumbled, but with power and 
will to put down misrule. He struck the key note for 
Virginian society by repairing the dilapidated church 
at Jamestown, giving it pews and a chancel of cedar, a 
communion table of black walnut, a lofty pulpit, and bells. 
Himself regularly attended in full dress with his officers 
and council, and a guard of fifty halberdiers in red cloaks, 
and sat in the choir in a green velvet chair with a velvet 
cushion to kneel on. 

Though no longer gold-seekers but real colonists, the 
men of Virginia were not such colonists as the Puritans. 



I. THE COLONIES. 41 

They were more akin in character to the Spaniard on the 
south of them, who made the Indian work for him, than 
to the New Engiander, who Avorked for himself. To 
work for them they had from the first a number of in- 
dentured servants, or bondsmen, jail-birds, many of them ; 
some kidnapped by press gangs in the streets of London, 
all of depraved character. Afterwards came in ever-in- 
creasing volume African slavery, the destined bane of 
Virginia and her ultimate ruin. Thus were formed the 
three main orders of Virginian society: the planter oli- 
garchy; the "poor whites," or as the negro dubbed them, 
" mean white trash " ; and the negro slaves. Middle class, 
in the proper sense of the term, there could hardly be. 
The poor whites were destined, after two centuries of a 
barbarous and debased existence, to end in a blaze of 
glory as the heroic infantry of the South. 

Virginia was not like New England, cooped between 
mountains and the sea ; nor was the soil niggard, though 
it was rapidly exhausted by slave labour. The planters 
were far apart, taking each of them instead of the small 
lots of the New Engiander, lai-ge tracts of land. Popu- 
lation instead of being condensed as in New England was 
scattered, and life was isolated instead of being intensely 
social. There was nothing worthy of the name of a town, 
much less of a city ; though Jamestown, and afterwards 
Williamsburg, was the capital of politics, pleasure, and 
sport. There were no townships nor township politics. 
The divisions were shires or colossal parishes. The pai'ish, 
as a designation at once ecclesiastical and administrative, 
was adopted from England. The country being inter- 
sected by rivers, each plantation could have, and prided 
itself on having a wharf of its own, at which, as a poi't 



42 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

of entry, ships could load and unload. As each planter 
dealt directly with the old country, there were no great 
seaports nor centres of distribution. Virginia's staple was 
tobacco, which could be well grown by slave labour, and 
required large estates because it was exhausting to the 
soil. This narcotic, the demand for which increased fast 
in Europe, was, as King James I thought, " the diabolical 
source" of Virginia's wealth and grandeur. An official 
personage, practically-minded, to whom a Virginian de- 
legation had commended a measure for the good of souls, 
replied, "Damn your souls, grow tobacco." An attempt 
was made to introduce silk-growing but it came to noth- 
ing. Industry of the higher kinds is shut out by slavery ; 
the population to which it gives birth would be socially 
and politically fatal, as well as economically alien, to a 
slave-owning community. It shows the crudity of Vir- 
ginian commerce that tobacco was not only the staple but 
the currency of the province, long after New England had 
discarded the use of wampum or bullets as money. 

Such was the birth of that famous planter-aristocracy 
which made so desperate a fight against democracy, first 
in the political arena, then on many a field of battle. It 
dwelt, save when it was debating, dancing, or racing at 
the capital, in lonely grandeur beside its broad rivers and 
private wharves, in mansions styled baronial, and in what 
it deemed manorial state, fed by the labour of slaves, and 
surrounded by the servility of poor whites. It rode in its 
coaches-and-six, the six horses being probably not more than 
enough to drag the family chariot over colonial roads. It 
had its trains of black lacqueys in brilliant liveries, which 
they hustled on when a stranger approached. But in its 
life and abodes there were less of comfort and of real 



I. THE COLOXIES. 43 

elegance than of grandeur. It spent its time a little in 
politics, more in fox-hunting, racing, gambling, cock-fight- 
ing, and general dissipation. It had plenty on its board, 
and commonly drank too much wine. It was hospitable, 
as lich men without neighbours and cra%ing for company 
always are. It had something, and fancied that it had 
much of the grand manner, the social grace, the chivalrous 
sentiment, which marked the territorial aristocracies of 
Europe. It was no doubt brave and mettlesome, rode well, 
was good at field sjjorts, had a quick sense of conventional 
honour, and was ready to fight duels. Of course, living 
bv the sweat of other men's brows, it was free from any- 
thing that is sordid in the indiLstiial or commercial char- 
acter. Not parsimony but prodigality was its faidt, and 
while it was master of many slaves it was apt itself to be 
the slave of debt. Some of the planters had, among their 
English equipments, English books, and prided themselves 
on their acquaintance with the British classics : but the 
average amount of culture among them was probabl}' low, 
and their College of William and Mar}- was no mate for 
Harvard. 

The appearance of slavery on the scene when other 
slaverv had almost disappeared from the face of the ci^'il- 
ized world opened a new chapter of eyil. It was the 
slavery of colour, indelible, without hope of fusion, ut- 
terly debased and debasing, and of all slaveries the most 
degraded. Its character was impressed on the slave law. 
" The black." to use a phrase afterwards made memorable, 
"had no rights which the white man was bound to re- 
spect." A master was not answerable for the murder of 
his slave, the law assuming that he would not wantonly 
destroy his own property. A code of terror guarded the 



44 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

master class. Fugitive slaves were hunted down like wild 
beasts and the fugitive might lawfully be shot by anj'one 
on sight. To quiet all doubt it was expressly enacted 
that conversion to Christianity was no bar to slavery. In- 
termarriage between whites and blacks was forbidden as 
incest, so that the gulf between the races was impassable. 
If a woman bore children to a white man, she carried them 
with her into slavery, and an American historian tells us 
that the offspring of men of station might be seen in the 
slave mart. Emancipation was not encouraged, and the 
emancipated negro was treated as a suspected pariah. 
The edge of the law seems to have been sharpened in 
Virginia after a negro insurrection. It is not to be sup- 
posed that the picture which such legislation presents was 
that of a Virginian planter's household. In the household 
the relation between master and slave no doubt was often 
patriarchal and kind, though even there the slave can 
hardly have risen morally or intellectually to a higher 
condition than that of a well treated horse or dog. But 
on large plantations, such as were multiplied in after 
times, more in other slave States than in Virginia, there 
being no personal tie between master and slave, the slave 
was a beast of labour to be used up without mercy. No 
community which had such a code could be healthy, or 
fail at last to be brought into conflict with the advance of 
moral civilization. Even with regard to the indentured 
servants the law was harsh and degrading. They were 
liable to the penalty of branding, and their terms of ser- 
vice might for delinquencies real or pretended be pro- 
longed to perpetual servitude. Such social conditions 
might, like those under which the Roman aristocracy was 
formed, give birth to regicides, but they could scarcely 
give birth to republicans of the true stamp. 



I. THE COLONIES. 45 

The political development of the southern colonies, like 
their industrial and social development, presented a strong 
contrast to that of New England commonwealths. The 
industrial and social character of a community is sure, 
in spite of constitutional forms, to draw the political char- 
acter with it. The New England colonies were practical 
republics, owing a nominal allegiance and paying occa- 
sional homage to a monarchy on the other side of the 
Atlantic. Virginia, after some fluctuations between char- 
tered self-government and vice-regal rule, became a colonial 
monarchy after the English pattern, with a governor who 
was the delegate of the king and a little image of royal 
majesty, a council, nominated by the governor, which 
faintly represented the House of Lords, and a representa- 
tive assembly which stood in the place of the House of 
Commons. A governor wielded more personal power than 
was left to the king at home, and exercised his veto freely 
when that of the king had been virtually resigned. He 
also exercised freely his military powers and his powers of 
appointment. The assembly, however, retained the power 
of the purse. The suffrage was at one time general ; after- 
wards it was limited to property. But nominal freedom 
or limitation mattered little, since power was really in the 
hands of the planters on whom most of the poor whites 
were dependent. The planters of each shire administered 
local government and justice in conclaves like the English 
quarter sessions, and with more than the authority of the 
English squire. In oligarchical Virginia, taxation took 
the form of a poll-tax, whereas in republican New England 
people were taxed according to their means. The oligarchs 
were not the more inclined to submit to political slavery 
because they owned slaves. They were tenacious of their 



46 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

own coiistitntional rights as Englishmen. These they 
maintained proudly against the governor, as the Barons had 
maintained them against the English king, and so far they 
were in political training for the revolution. 

The Church of England was established, though in a 
loose and rather ragged way, without a hierarchy, as well 
as devoid of the cathedrals and the ancient churches which 
are the pillars of her ascendancy in her own land. Disper- 
sion of the population must have been much against church 
going, and in Virginia there was probably little of religious 
life. Such notices as we have of clerical habits lead us 
to think that there was at least one Parson Trulliber to 
every Pareon Adams, perhaps to every Dr. Primrose. The 
parson, like everybody else in the primitive state of com- 
merce, was paid not in money but in tobacco. There were 
laws against papists as in England, and there was the same 
contumelious toleration of dissenters. In Western Virginia 
was a settlement of Presbyterians, driven by persecuting 
bishops from Ireland with hearts full of bitter feeling 
against the English church and government, as they were 
afterwards to show. Here there was religion, and the 
settlement was one day to give birth to a singular mixture 
of Old Testament piety with slavery militant, in the per- 
son of " Stonewall " Jackson. 

Saving the tinge of culture boasted by some of the plant- 
ers, there was no education or literature. A good royal 
governor could say in 1670, "I thank God there are no 
free schools nor printing and I hope we shall not have these 
hundred years. For learning has brought disobedience into 
the world and printing has divulged them and libels against 
the best of Governments : God keep us from both." In a 
slave state a system of free schools or general education on 



I. THE COLONIES. 47 

any footing would not only have been uncongenial, it 
would have been dynamite. Schools even for the rich 
there were few, if any. Young planters were brought up 
at home under tutors who usually had not much to teach, 
and whose pupils were not likely to be docile. Of the 
wealthiest some went to the universities of the old land. 
Law and medicine must have been weak. 

Virgmia had of all the colonies the best reputation at the 
English court. It was royalist to the core and thoroughly 
loyal. Of this its title " Tlie Old Dominion " Ls a monu- 
ment. It denounced as impious tlie execution of Charles I 
and afforded an asylum to many of the defeated cavaliers, 
whose traditions could not fail to import a fresh strain of 
loyalty into the Virginian character. It bowed to the 
Commonwealth and the Protectorate, but exulted in the 
Restoration. There was, however, a Puritan section, which 
having raised its head under the Commonwealth, resisted 
the Absolutist and Anglican reaction and could only be 
put down by force. That was the time of Governor Berke- 1642. 
ley, who so frankly uttered his sentiments on the subject 
of free schools and printing. He was the model of a 
royalist governor, able and apparently beneficent in his 
way, but a devout believer in prerogative and an extermi- 
nator of Puritans and Republicans. His ^'igour brought on 
a rebellion which seems to have had its origin among the 
freemen of the poorer class and was headed by a Virginian 
Gracchus named Bacon. This for a moment convulsed the 
colony. Jamestown was razed to the ground by the insiu- 
gents. But Bacon died suddenly in mid-career. His fol- 1676. 
lowing, drawn from a small and feeble section, at once 
broke up, and the governor held a Bloody Assize which is 
said to have brought on liim a contemptuous ejaculation 



48 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

from Charles II, who was not a man of blood except when 
mercy would give more trouble. 

Bacon's rebellion seems to have been brought on partly 
by a suspicion that the governor had an underhand con- 
nection for commercial purposes with the Indians, and 
was disposed to protect them against the whites. The 
relations of the two races in the land of Pocahontas were 
pretty murderous, and could hardly fail to affect the 
character of the dominant race, but the Indians of the 
South were less ferocious and formidable than those 
whom the Puritan encountered in the North. 

1633. Maryland, in its origin, was in two respects peculiar ; 
it was founded not by a chartered company but by a 
proprietor, and its projector was a Roman Catholic. Lord 
Baltimore, a statesman who had taken great interest in 
colonization and had convinced himself that companies 
failed through mismanagement and greed, obtained a 
grant of the territory from the crown. He was a convert 
to Roman Catholicism, and endowed the colony with 
toleration for the special benefit of a church which, else- 
where dominant and persecuting, was depressed and 
persecuted in England. Lord Baltimore dying, his son 
Cecil founded Maryland. Jesuits came out with the first 
colonists and began their missionary work among the 
Indians. Neither of the peculiar features, however, 
proved lasting. The proprietor, whose authority was by 
his patent that of a prince palatine, found it necessary to 
compound with the English tendencies of the free settlers 
and allow himself to be reduced to the position of a con- 
stitutional ruler, with an assembly of the usual kind, in 
which was vested the all-important power of taxation. 



I. THE COLONIES. 49 

By the victory of Puritanism over Charles I in Enghind, 
Puritanism in Maryland, where it formed an element of 
the motley population, was incited to strike for power, 
and it defeated the party of the Pope and the Proprietary 
in a little pitched battle at Providence. In that fight, as 
at Naseby and Worcester, according to the Puritan writer 
of " Babylon's Fall in England," " God did appear wonder- 
ful in the field and in the hearts of the people : all con- 
fessed Him to be the only worker of this victory and 
deliverance." With the Restoration returned the govern- 
ment of the Proprietary, well administered by Charles 
Calvert, the third Lord Baltimore, under whom religious 
quarrels were hushed, toleration reigned, tobacco was 
grown, and the province prospered. But the Revolution 
in England brought another rising of Protestants against 
toleration of the Catholics, and in the end Maryland was 
made a royal province, received a royal governor, and was 
settled politically on the regular model with a council 
and representative assembly. The ecclesiastical settle- 
ment was finally the same, in form at least, as that of 
England, the Church of England being established, 
though probably in little force, and Protestant dissenters 
being tolerated, while toleration was, at least legally, 
withheld from Catholics in the colony of their own 
foundation. The culture of tobacco led to the employ- 
ment of slave labour. Maryland was drawn within 
the fatal circle of the slave States, and became the do- 
main of a planter class like that of Virginia, but less 
oligarchical. Nothing in political physiology is more 
marked than the influence of tobacco, cotton, and rice 
on the social and political character of the Southern 
States. 



50 THE UNITED STATES. 



1671 The Carolinas, like Maryland, were a proprietary colony 



to 



-I700. founded by a group of leading men in England, to whom 
Charles II made a rather blind grant of a territory already 
in part occupied by settlers, and who appear not only to 
have been desirous of gain but ambitious of founding a 
model community. Among them was ^Shaftesbury, whose 
hand we seem to trace in a special clause peculiar to this 
charter, which in consideration of the distance from home 
authorized the proprietaries to establish any religion they 
chose, a curious indication of the political character of 
the English State religion. For an ideal constitution the 
proprietaries applied to the wisdom of Locke, and the 
wisdom of Locke gave them a Grand Model which, 
especially considering that it was intended for the rough 
population of a new settlement, may be regarded as the 
most awful of warnings to political castle builders. It is 
an ineffable structure of the feudal type, with a hierarchy 
of hereditary land owners under the names of Landgraves 
and Caciques — the latter name being probably intended 
as a compliment to native sentiment — a division of the 
land into seignories, and, what seems incredible as a 
proposal of Locke, a race of hereditary tenants attached 
like villeins-regardant to the soil. To keep government 
in the hands of intelligence and property seems to have 
been the philosopher's aim. This scheme the proprie- 
taries actually tried to put in force. It could produce 
nothing but disgust, revolt, and confusion. The only 
thing in it worthy of Locke is complete religious tolera- 
tion. In the course of the political squabbles which inevi- 
tably ensued, South Carolina was severed from North 
Carolina and transferred from the proprietaries to a royal 
governor. Into North Carolina, attracted by toleration, 



I. THE COLONIES. 51 

came Huguenots from Fiance, persecuted Covenanters 
from Scotland and other religious refugees, whose char- 
acter, together with the climate and husbandry of an 
upland country, was the saving of North Carolina, so that 
though in the slave group she was scarcely of it. But of 
South Carolina the staple became partly the fatal tobacco, 
largely the yet more fatal staple of rice, grown on 
swampy tracts where white men could not work. The 
consequence was a large importation of negro slaves. 
South Carolina had also a sinister connection with the 
slave-owning and buccaneering West Indies. Corsairs 
such as Captain Kidd and Black Beard found shelter 
in her ports. In the upshot she became the typical 
slave state, the heart of slavery and the focus of all 
the ideas and all the ambitions connected with the sys- 
tem ; while Charleston, her social capital and seaport, 
became the paradise of planter society with its luxury, 
state, and pride. Her slave code transcended even that 
of Virginia in cruelty, and expressed still more vividly 
the terrors of a dominant race. Everyone who found 
a slave abroad without a pass was to flog him on the 
spot. All negro houses were to be searched once a fort- 
night for arms and for stolen goods. For the fourth lar- 
ceny a slave was to suffer death, and the kind of death was 
left to the discretion of the judge. For running away 
a fourth time the slave was to undergo mutilation. For 
punishing a slave so that he died, no one was to suffer any 
penalty. For the wilful murder of a slave the penalty 
was a fine of forty pounds. It need not be supj)osed 
that the most revolting articles of the code were often 
put in force or that they represent the general relations 
between master and slave. 



62 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

1733. Georgia was founded by the philanthropic General 
Oglethorpe, whose heart had been wrung with pity for 
the sufferings of debtors imprisoned under the barbarous 
law of those days. It was to be the refuge of the pauper 
and the bankrupt, and was to empty the workhouses of 
England. Another object was the erection of a bulwark 
against the Spaniards of Florida. Unluckily the settlers 
chosen, instead of being labourers, were men who had 
failed in trade and were good for nothing as husbandmen. 

1734. Better elements of population came in, Highlanders, 
Moravians, Protestants of Salzburg expelled by their 
persecuting Prince Bishop. But the shiftless and lazy 
immigrants called at once for rum, which had been pro- 
hibited, and for slaves to do the work. By the workers 
the entrance of slavery was opposed, but the climate and 
the contagion of the neighbouring colonies prevailed. 
Slavery forced its entrance, and Georgia was numbered 
with the slave states. It is not on the government of the 
mother country that in this case the blame can be cast. 

1736. In its earlier days the colony was the scene of an unfort- 
unate episode in the life of Wesley, Avho there, after a 
strange love affair, encountered an evil-speaking genera- 
tion ; and of the preaching of Whitefield, who kindled a 
flame of religion by his preaching, but pleaded for slav- 
ery, seeing in it an instrument of conversion. Whatever 
the special fancy of a founder might be, climate, soil, 
and natural circumstances generally, together with human 
nature, soon prevailed over his will. Model colonies are 
apt to come to nothing except as they may enlist settlers 
of high character, and thus lay a good social foundation. 



I. THE COLONIES. 53 

The group of Middle States was formed round the Dela- 
ware, New York, and Chesapeake bays. Pennsylvania, as 1681. 
all know, was the philanthropic utopia of the renowned 
and somewhat enigmatic character whose name it bears. 
Quakerism was by this time clothed and in its right mind. 
It had passed from George Fox to Barclay. It was be- 
coming commercial, even eminently commercial, and its 
political quietism, which in Penn assumed the form of an 
equivocal connection with the court, distinguished it fa- 
vourably from the political sects in the eyes of the 
Stuarts. Partly in satisfaction of a debt due from the 
crown to his estate, Penn was made lord of Pennsylvania 
with almost kingly powers, including those of peace and 
war, which he of course intended to exercise only in the 
interests of peace. His scheme of government was popu- 
lar. He renounced for himself and his successors any 
power of doing mischief, " that the will of one man might 
not hinder the good of the whole country." The other 
characteristics which he impressed upon his settlement 
were religious toleration, a mild criminal law with the 
reformation of the criminal in view, and good treatment 
of the Indians. Toleration was extended to all who be- 
lieved in God and would be good citizens, though Chris- 
tianity was recognized as the religion of the community by 
the enforced observance of Sunday, Murder was the only 
capital offence. There was a moral and social code of the 
Puritan type, but there was little of theocratic power to 
enforce it. To Penn's good treatment of the Indians his 
colony owed peace in that quarter and uninterrupted 
progress. Slavery was not excluded. That Penn himself 
once held slaves a will, though not his last, remains to 
show ; but he strove, though in vain, to secure for the 



54 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

slaves the right of legal marriage. The soil and climate, 
however, combined with the general character of the set- 
tlers, shut out the pest. To Pennsylvania presently came 
a large exodus of Germans, driven from their homes by 
war. They gave the province a body of laborious hus- 
bandmen, but rather bucolic citizens. Their descendants, 
who are called the Pennsylvania Dutch, have preserved 
the two-fold character as well as the traces of their an- 
cestral language. Penn, in spite of his philanthropy and 
liberalism, became embroiled like other governors and 
proprietaries with his lieges. His son, whom evil associa- 
tions had made a libertine, renounced Quakerism in wrath 
at the treatment of his father by the sect. Toleration 
made Pennsylvania a religious museum. In it, besides 
the Quakers, were Anglicans, Lutherans, Scotch Presby- 
terians, Palatines, Ridge Hermits, Dunkers, and Pietists. 
Roman Catholics alone were here, as elsewhere, under a 
ban of suspicion which the persecuting violence of Louis 
XIV and the Prince Bishop of Salzburg might partly 
excuse. Power, with a large share of the commerce and 
wealth of which Philadelphia became the seat, was in the 
hands of the Quakers, who as rulers were prudent, thrifty, 
and always averse from war. To war, however necessary, 
they would contribute only under the form which satisfied 
their own consciences, of a gift to the government, for the 
use of which the conscience of the government was to 
answer, or, as on one occasion they did, as a supply for the 
purchase of bread, flour, wheat, or other grain, the other 
grain being understood to be gunpowder. Their institu- 
tions sustained their reputation for philanthropy, and by 
them the first lunatic asylum in America was founded. 
1614. New York, which its ample territory and the possession 



I . 



I. THE COLONIES. 55 

of the most magnificent of harbours have now made the 
Empire State and the seat of the commercial capital of the 
Union, was originally Ne^y Netherland, a Dutch colony- 
founded in the golden age of Holland's naval greatness. 
Delaware, the neighbouring state, was a colony of Sweden 1627. 
founded in the glorious days of Gustavus Adolphus. The 
Dutchman by his superior power mastered the Swede ; 
the Englishman mastered the Dutchman. Hardly could 1664. 
the two groups of English colonies north and south have 
suffered a wedge of alien dominion to be thrust between 
them. Dutch colonization seems to have been barely 
on a par with Dutch commerce and seamansliip. New 
Netherland was dominated by the patroons, magnates 
invested with vast grants of land, who exercised seignorial 
sway and lived in seignorial state. The ancient title is 
still cherished, and about half a century ago the claim 
of a patroon for services to be rendered by the tenants 
upon what had once been his domain gave birth to a petty 
civil war. At Albany are still Dutch houses, Dutch faces, 
and families rejoicing in Dutch pedigrees. There is still 
a Dutch Reformed Church, and an old lady being told 
that " Dutch " was to be dropped in order that the char- 
acter of the church might be universal, replied that she 
did not want the church to be universal, it was the church 
of the old Dutch families of that state. After going 
through the usual political struggles and sufferings — a 
temporary suspension of her liberties under James H and 
his satrap Andros followed by a tragi-comic revolution in 
which Leisler, a patriot leader, mounted the scaffold of. 
Russell and Algernon Sidney — Xew York settled down 
politically into the regular form of the English constitution 
adapted to the colonies, and with the usual constitutional 



56 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

bickerings between the governor and the assembly, the 
quarrel being chiefly here as elsewhere about money. 
i()G4. New Jersey was created by dismemberment from New 
York. It had a motley population and hardly any history 
distinct from that of the larger state. It became a coun- 
try of gentlemen farmers with a peasantry. It received, 
however, a colony of persecuted Covenanters which made 
it one of the chief seats of Presbyterianism and of 
which Princeton University may be regarded as a noble 
memorial. 

The population of the New England colonies was almost 
purely English, and reflected the virtues and faults of 
English character as seen in the Englishman of the middle 
class, though with Puritan and colonial modifications. 
The population of the Middle States was very mixed. 
It comprised, besides Englishmen, detachments or waifs of 
almost every protestant nation and church in Europe ; 
Scotch Highlanders and Lowlanders, Scotch-Irish, French 
Huguenots, Germans from different parts of Germany, 
Moravians, Dutch, Swedes, Finns, and a few Jews. But 
almost everywhere the English language prevailed. Eveiy- 
where there was a constitution after the British model, 
with a governor representing the king or proprietary, and 
a representative assembly with two houses answering to 
the two Houses of Parliament. Local self-government in 
the Middle States was a mean between the intense local 
life of the New England townships and the political lan- 
guor of the Virginian shire. There were not generally any 
common schools or any regular provision for education, 
but there was education, there was learning, printing was 
free. Practical toleration prevailed, saving an occasional 
outbreak of intolerance against Roman Catholics, whose 



I. THE COLONIES. 57 

church, it must be borne in mind, was always giving pro- 
vocation by persecuting wherever she had the power. The 
social code was far less strict than in Puritan New Eng- 
land. The keeping of the Sabbath was probably about 
the only Puritan law that was really enforced. Theatri- 
cals, sternly banished from New England, found reception 
in the Middle States. Slavery everywhere existed by 
law, but it was kept down by the ascendancy of free 
labour and by the nature of the products. That the negro 
in New York was a slave appeared with dire distinctness 
when, in consequence of a vague alarm of incendiarism 
in New York city, upon evidence utterly disreputable and 1741. 
without fair trial, thirteen negroes were burnt at the stake 
and eighteen were hanged. A Catholic priest, accused 
of instigating the negroes, was with them judicially 
murdered. 

With James II royal tyranny ceased, but parliamentary 1688. 
tyranny began. Parliament, now the supreme power, 
made itself the legislative organ of a commercial interest, 
animated by that blind and unscrupulous greed which has 
been the bane and disgrace of commerce and continues 
to animate the monopolist at the present day. By the 
Trade and Navigation Acts England sought to engross 
not only the carrying trade but the general trade of her 
colonies, and shut them out from the markets of the world. 
In doing this she only followed the practice of the time, 
and gave effect to the belief universally accepted, and 
endorsed even by Montesquieu, that colonies were planted 
for the commercial benefit of the imperial country. No 
one had yet learned to think of them as the germs of inde- 
pendent nations. The real interests even of the imperial 



58 THE UNITED STATES. chap, 

country were sacrificed, as Adam Smith showed, to those 
of the merchants, who were the principal instigators of the 
policy. So far, however, from being the chiefest, Great 
Britain was the least of sinners in this respect, and Adam 
Smith might say with truth that her policy was less illib- 
eral and oppressive than that of any other nation. France 
strangled by monopoly the fur trade of Canada. Spain 
allowed her colonists to trade only with the single port of 
Cadiz. England, while she trammelled the trade of her 
colonies afforded them the best of markets ; especially did 
she afford the best of markets for the timber and marine 
stores of New England. More odious even than the re- 
straints upon colonial trade were the restraints upon 
colonial manufactures. The colonists were not allowed 
to make woollens, steel, hats, or any other articles by the 
manufacture of which they would compete with the mother 
country. This seemed no injustice to Chatham, who pro- 
claimed the right of the imperial country to restrain the 
colonies from manufacturing even a horseshoe or a 
hobnail. Royal claims to trees of a certain size, as the 
perquisite of the royal navy, had been at one time a just 
cause of discontent. If England crippled colonial trade 
with her restrictions she tried to foster it with bounties, 
while of the articles most important to colonial trade some 
were exempt from restrictions. The Navigation Act seems 
to have stimulated colonial ship-building which was very 
prosperous. Yet the system might have been intolerable 
had not the pressure of the commercial fetters been re- 
lieved by salutary smuggling. In fact the commercial 
restrictions seem to have been systematically disregarded. 
1695. The Board of Trade, which had been called into existence 
by the growth of British commerce, acted as the guardian 



I. THE COLONIES. 59 

power of British monopoly, having its sentinels in the 
colonial governors, on whose information it was always 
complaining of violations of the Trade and Navigation 
Acts. It^ had even the assurance to propose the abroga- 
tion of such colonial charters as remained, in order that 
the sweep of its action might be unconfined. After all, 
the gains of the imperial country itself from this wretched 
policy cannot have anything like equalled the expense of 
defending the colonies. Certainly they did not counter- 
vail the indirect losses from the depression of the colonial 
trade, the benefit of which, had it been allowed free de- 
velopment, England more than any other nation would 
have enjoyed. 

Wrangling between the governor as the organ of pre- 
rogative and the assembl}^ as the trustee of liberty went 
on in almost all the colonies ; Virginia and Maryland 
almost alone enjoying, in their later da,js at least, some- 
thing like political peace. The executive, fitfully sup- 
ported by the home government, strove to make itself 
independent by means of fixed revenues and salaries, 
while the assembly strove to keep the executive depend- 
ent on it by a system of annual grants. Supplies for the 
colonial wars were another subject of contention, especially 
when the colony lay remote from the seat of war. Nor 
was there less of niggardliness and fractiousness on the 
side of the assemblies than there was of a disposition to 
encroach on the side of the representatives of the crown. 
These embroilments are recounted with glee by historians 
who deem them the training school of patriotism and pre- 
paratory to the struggle for independence. But such a 
view would seem to identify patriotism with resistance to 
government and to glorify revolution. The revolution in 



60 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

which these bickerings ended in fact did not a little 
to foster such sentiments. Anglo-Saxon love of liberty in 
the colonies, strong from the beginning, needed no such 
contentious training, and right reason will only deplore 
the retention of a tie of which strife was the inevitable 
consequence, which was at last broken by civil war, and 
has left a heritage of malignant memories behind. Revo- 
lution is the medicine not the bread of nations, and genu- 
ine patriotism in ordinary times is loyal co-operation with 
authority. 

Of the governors sent out from England, some were 
bad, being men appointed from corrupt motives in an era 
of political corruption, ruined retainers of a party who 
came to retrieve their fortunes, sometimes by illicit means, 
or Englishmen ignorant of colonial character and unsuited 
in temper for their work. But some, as Bellomont in 
New York, Spotswood in Virginia, Calvert in Maryland, 
Archdale and Blake in Carolina, were good ; and when 
the governor was good, it is not unlikely that for quiet 
citizens, for all to whom politics were not a trade or a 
game, his rule may have been as beneficent and as moral 
as any which this continent has seen or is likely soon to 
see. One good service the governors, and the home gov- 
ernment by which they were supported, certainly did, they 
repressed the general tendency of the colonies to raise the 
wind by the issue of paper money. Appointments to sub- 
ordinate offices in the colonies seem to have been abused 
and the evil probably extended to the judiciary. Such 
was sure, especially in bad times, to be the consequence 
of attempting to govern across an ocean a country greatly 
differing from the imperial country in circumstances and 
in the character of its people. Mutual ignorance was and 
always will be in itself fatal to transatlantic tutelage. 



I. THE COLONIES. 61 

Another source of friction was the endeavour of the 
Church of England to establish itself in the colonies on the 
necks of those upon whom high churchmen looked down 
as dissenters. The Societj^ for the Propagation of the Gos- 
pel did good work in improving the character of the colo- 
nial clergy, but it was a society for the propagation of 
episcopacy at the same time. Episcopacy was backed by 
the court and the Tory party, ever faithful to the policy of 
the monarch who said "no Bishop, no King." The Rev. 
Mr. Miller, an episcopal clergyman, writing from New 
York to the Bishop of London, gives a deplorable picture 
of colonial society in which he says : " God's grace having 
been withdrawn, the Evil One has it all his own way." 
Of this the cause in Mr. Miller's opinion is that there are 
no churches but oiily meeting houses with none but " pre- 
tended ministers," who, if they have any orders at all, are 
Presbyterians or Independents and are slaves to the pleas- 
ure of their congregations. His specific is the importation 
of a bishop as suffragan to the Bishop of London with a 
salary of X 1,500 a year and the King's Farm for his palace. 
The " pretended ministers " would be sure to concur with 
the Evil One in objecting to the application of this remedy. 
To the Puritan of New England above all episcopacy was 
most hateful. Dread of its introduction disposed the 
puritan clergy to revolution. 

Added to all was the general tendency of the imperial 
people to bear themselves haughtily towards those of the 
dependencies and of the people of the dependencies to resent 
imperial haughtiness. This was an inevitable incident of 
the relation. Every citizen of the imperial country felt 
himself, as Franklin said, part of a sovereign ; and while 
the colonist acknowledged a superior his vanity smarted. 
In some measure it is so ztill. 



62 THE UNITED STATES. chai. 

By this time the political press was born, the New 
England C our ant having appeared in 1722 and a political 
journal at New York having been brought out not long 
afterwards ; and, though the giant was yet in the cradle, 
journalism was not long in becoming an organ of democratic 
agitation. It appears that in 1765, when the fatal era was 
approaching, there were over forty newspapers in America. 
Unwillingness to submit to imperial control and nascent 
tendencies towards independence were already visible, and 
formed the burden of complaints transmitted by colonial 
governors or officers to the home government. Admiral 
Warren, who had been acting with New Englanders, 
describes them to the ministry as having "the highest 
notions of the rights and liberties of Englishmen and indeed 
as almost Levellers." A suspicion that the plantations 
were " not without thoughts of throwing off their depend- 
ence " prevailed in England, and the lieutenant governor 
of New York exhorted his lieges to allay it by a grant of a 
fixed revenue. It is true that in reply the members of the 
assembly took it upon themselves to vouch that not one 
person in the province had any such thought or desire, "for 
under what government could they be better protected or 
their liberties so well secured ? " The colonists of England 
did enjoy of political liberty a large, of personal liberty a 
full, measure. In spite of all the commercial restrictions 
the colonies greatly j)rospered, their population rapidly 
increased, and most favourable pictures of their condition 
and progress were drawn by observers at the time. 
1706 A characteristic as well as a memorable product of colo- 
nial civilization at this epoch was Benjamin Eranklin, by 
birth and education a New Englander, by adoption a Penn- 
sylvanian. He cannot be said to have been an offspring 



to 
1790 



I. THE COLONIES. 63 

of the theocracy, inasmuch as he was a latitudinarian in 
religion and had a natural son. But he was an offspring 
of New England Puritanism grown mellow. His commer- 
cial shrewdness, his practical inventiveness, his fundamental 
integrity, his public spirit, his passion for improvement, 
were native to his community in the phase which it had 
now reached, no less than were his " Poor Richard " phi- 
losophy of life and the absence in him of anything spiritual 
or romantic. He it was who in his boyhood had suggested 
to his father that much time might be saved by saying 
grace at once over the whole barrel of red herrings. He 
leads up the mighty army of American inventors. At 
the same time though no revolutionist by nature he was the 
destined harbingrer of the Revolution. He had been the 
first projector of a general union of the colonies. His figure 
marks the transition to the revolutionary and national 
period which is now opening from that of the Puritan 
commonwealth. 



CHAPTER II. 

REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 

TT cannot be too often repeated that the rehxtion between 
the imperial country and a colonial dependency was 
radically false. It became more manifestly false as the 
colony grew in strength and every conceivable need of 
tutelage passed away. Separation was sure to come. It 
was visibly approaching. But its arrival was delayed, the 
tie of affection between the mother country and her off- 
spring was for a time renewed, and the shadow on the 
dial which hastened towards the fatal hour was turned 
1689 backward by the series of struggles in which Great 
JY59 Britain and her colonies were together engaged with 
France, the long arm of whose ambition reaching from 
Quebec round to the valley of the Mississippi threatened, 
or seemed to threaten, not only the ascendancy but the 
securit}^ of Englishmen in the new world, while native 
savages under French Catholic instigation were always 
harassing the Protestant settlements of New England. 
The population of French Canada compared with that 
of the English colonies was very small, but all French 
Canadians of military age were fighting men. Their 
force was wielded by the single will of a military gov- 
ernor such as Frontenac or Montcalm, and with them 
were the regular troops of conquering France. The 

64 



CHAP. II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 65 

Indian was mainly on the side of the Frenchman, who 
amalgamated with him more easily than the Englishman, 
nor did the Jesuit shrink from launching his savage con- 
vert with tomahawk and firebrand on the villages of the 
heretic. The English colonies had no sufficient bond 
apart from their common allegiance to the empire to 
unite them against a foe whose union was complete. 
Besides their disputes with the royal governors they 
had quarrels among themselves about boundaries, about 
relations with the Indians, about shares of responsibility 
for the cost of colonial wars. Even their commercial 
union was imperfect. It was difficult to induce such of 
them as were remote from the point of danger to con- 
tribute to the common defence. An attempt was made 
to bring about a defensive union. It was earnestly sup- 
ported by Franklin who to his account of the loss of a 
fort added a picture of a rattle-snake cut into thirteen 
pieces with the motto " Join or Die." But the plan when 
framed pleased neither the colonists, who thought there was 
too much in it of royal supremacy, nor the crown, which 
thought there was too much in it of independence. In 
fact the colonies could not fully feel the necessity, so 
long as they were united under the imperial government 
and led by its commanders. Nor were English colonists 
military like the French, but agricultural and commer- 
cial, though, as the stormy waters witnessed, they were 
strong and brave. Wolfe said of his North American 
Rangers that they were the worst soldiers in the universe, 
a censure which, however, must have referred more to 
lack of discipline than of valour and was inapplicable 
to bush-fighting with Indians, as the rout of Braddock's 
regulars and the protection of their retreat by Washing- 



66 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

ton's Virginian Militia had shown. Ships of war the 
colonies had none. Hardly without the aid of British 
armies, fleets, and commanders would colonial prowess have 
prevailed over the warlike bush rangers of Quebec with the 

1744. armies, fleets, and generals of France. A colonial expedi- 
tion took Louisbourg, the Gibraltar of North America, 
without the aid of British troops ; but the works of Louis- 
bourg were then weak, the garrison was ill-provided and 
mutinous, the commandant was irresolute, and when his 
supplies were cut off by a British fleet he surrendered. 
Otherwise this famous enterprise, undertaken in a fit of 
enthusiasm, religious as well as military, and led by 
crusaders ignorant of war, would probably have failed. 
Better for the colonists than British protection against 
France, for which they paid by entanglement in European 
quarrels, would have been a compact of colonial neutral- 
ity, exempting the American colonies of European powers 
from wars between the imperial countries. Such a pro- 
ject had been framed and even embraced, but it proved 
abortive. As it was, New England might have been i 
worsted in the struggle with New France had not the 
protecting arm of Old England been stretched over her. 
Though the war was European, it was in no merely 
British quarrel that British blood was poured out and 
British treasure lavished on the American field. Brad- 
dock may have been arrogant and blundering, but the fact 
remains that he and his soldiers were there at England's 
cost to defend her American children against the French 
and their Indian allies. Not for Great Britain alone, but 
for the British race and for its ascendancy on this con- 
tinent the red coats conquered on the heights of Abraham 

1759. and Wolfe died. A 



LJ 



II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 67 

That colonial loyalty was in a great measure fear of 
France and that the colonists, as soon as England had rid 
them of that fear, would break the tie, was the surmise of 
shrewd and cynical observers at the time. Yet Americans 
will hardly upbraid the mother country with blindness in 
not foreseeing that result. When the question arose 
whether Great Britain should retain Canada or take a 
sugar island which to herself would have been more valu- 
able, Franklin pressed on her the retention of Canada. 
Assuming his advice to have been sincere he must have 
trusted colonial gratitude. There was at all events a tran- 
sient renewal of love. When Quebec fell the bonfires of 1759. 
loyalty were lighted. England and Chatham were in all 
colonial hearts. If only that happy moment could have 
been seized for parting in peace ! If when the British flag 
was run up on the great stronghold of France, the mother 
country could have said to the child, "I have done for 
you all that a parent could do, I have secured to you the 
dominion of the new world, you have outgrown my pro- 
tection and control, follow henceforth your own destiny, 
cultivate your magnificent heritage and be grateful to the 
arm which helped to win it for you ! " Had those unuttered 
words been spoken, how different might have been the his- 
tory of our race, perhaps to the end of time ! 

It is needless and would be painful to recount to English- 
men the annals of a quarrel which fills a too familiar page 
in English history, and wretched as it was on both sides, 
went nearer through its European extension than even the 
domination of Louis XIV or the conquests of Napoleon 
to bringing the head of England low among the nations. 
Few require to be again told how when England was 
burdened by a heavy debt contracted in the war, George 



68 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

Grenville in an evil hour bethought liim of making the 
colonies contribute to their own defence, while he enforced 
at the same time with calamitous industry the fiscal laws 
and the restrictions on trade ; how to raise revenue for a 
1764. colonial army he imposed the stamp duty ; how the colo- 
nists resisted and Chatham applauded their resistance ; 
how by Rockingham with Burke at his side the stamp 

1766. duty was repealed, while with the repealing act was un- 
happily coupled, to save imperial honour, a declaration of 
the power of Parliament to bind the colonies by its 
legislation in all cases; how peace and a measure of 
good feeling were thereby restored ; how Townshend 
usurping command of the government during an eclipse 
of Chatham madly re-opened the fatal issue b}' the im- 

1767. position of a number of import duties; how Parliament 
gave a careless assent to Townshend's proposal; how 
colonial resistance was renewed; how while the other 
duties were repealed pride and obstinacy retained the tea 
duty as a proof of power ; how strife again broke out and 
ended ouly with the destruction of the unity of the British 
race. Nor would it be profitable to rehearse arguments 
which were mostly in the air, though they had too practi- 
cal an influence on the conduct of statesmen and of politi- 
cal assemblies. A sovereign power there must have been 
somewhere. Where could it be but in the Imperial Parlia- 
ment? Had not the colonists just acquiesced in an act 
declaring the power of Parliament to bind them in all 
cases ? Out of the jurisdiction of Parliament they could 
not pretend to be, since they had submitted to laws made 
by Parliament respecting navigation, trade, naturalization, 
and other imperial matters, not to mention the Habeas 
Corpus Act, or the common law which was recognized in 



II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. G9 

the colonies, and must have had for its basis the legislative 
supremacy of the parliament of Great Britain. That there 
was an essential difference between internal and external 
taxation, as Chatham in the interest of peace and unity 
contended, few will now maintain. The sovereign power 
must include the power of taxation, and taxation is but an 
exercise of the legislative power in the form of a law enact- 
ing that the impost shall be paid. We rely for our judg- 
ment respecting these questions mainly on Burke. But 
Burke though of all rhetoricians the most philosophic was 
still a rhetorician and presented only one side of a case. 
Of this his essay on the French Revolution is the memo- 
rable and disastrous proof. Though he goes deep into 
everything he seldom goes to the bottom. You cannot 
extract from him any definite theory of the colonial rela- 
tion, of the authority which an imperial country was 
entitled really to exercise over colonial dependencies, or 
of the use of such dependencies if authority really to be 
exercised there was none. Was Great Britain bound to 
defend the colonies and were the colonies not bound, 
unless they chose, to contribute to the defence? Was 
each colonial legislature in the case of a peril calling for 
common effort to be at liberty to renounce its share of the 
burden? It is said that if England had then done by the 
American colonies as she has since done by her other 
colonies, the result would have been equally happy. The 
result is that she bears the whole burden of imperial 
defence and all other expenses of the Empire while the 
colonies lay protective duties on her goods. Of such an 
empire neither Burke nor anyone else at that time dreamed. 
They all, however indistinct their vision might be, had in 
their minds an empire of real power and solid gain. 



70 THE rXITED STATES. chap. 

Would Chatham have thought of allowing the colonies to 
lay protective duties on British goods, he who talked of 
forbidding tliem even to make a nail for a horseshoe ? 
Wisdom spoke, albeit in a crabbed way, by the mouth of 
Dean Tucker, on whose mind, Tory as he was, the truth 
had dawned that colonial dependencies were of no real use 
commercially, inasmuch as you might trade with a colony 
just as well when it was independent, and of less than no 
use politically when they were in a chronic state of smoth- 
ered sedition and refused to contribute to the defence of 
the Empire. The Dean advised, if the colonies persisted 
in their refusal, to bid them begone in peace, an invitation 
which at that time they would almost certainly have 
declined. But the voice of wisdom was not recognized 
even by the philosophic Burke. On the other hand Burke 
was surely right in rejecting the plan countenanced b}- 
Adam Smith of colonial representation in the Imperial 
Parliament. The difficulty of distance would have been 
very great, that of the appointment of representatives still 
greater, especially as the House of Commons was then 
constituted; that of a total want of community of interest 
between states on opposite sides of the Atlantic would have 
been the greatest of all. The plan of a federal union between 
the American colonies and Great Britain floated as some 
think before the mind of Chatham. Such a union might 
have lived with Chatham ; with Chatham it would have died. 
At the same time we must recognize the natural senti- 
ment of empire. When Chatham speaks with pride of 
that " ancient and most noble monarchy " which his genius 
had raised to the height of glory, and with anguish of its 
possible dismemberment, his emotion is surely not less 
generous than any that swelled the bosom of Samuel or 



II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 71 

John Adams, Patrick Henry, or Thomas Paine. It may 
even be said that the determination of George III to hold 
the colonies at whatever cost of blood and treasure, at 
whatever risk to his crown, was more complimentary to 
them, if it was less kind, than the proposal of Dean Tucker 
at once to show them the door. This controversy to 
Americans is dead. For England it will retain something 
of a living interest so long as the tie of colonial depend- 
ence, though attenuated, continues to exist with difficul- 
ties and liabilities reduced yet not annulled. 

That the cause of the revolt was not general oppression 
of the colonies by the mother country seems clear. We 
have seen that when a governor of New York charged his 
assembly with a tendency to independence, the assembly 
responded by a vehement protestation of attachment to 
the government under which they lived. Franklin de- 
clared that having travelled over the whole countr}^ and 
kept company with people of all sorts he had never heard 
from any person, drunk or sober, the expression of a wish 
for separation or a hint that such a thing could be advan- 
tageous to America. John Adams said as late as March, 
1775, of the people of Massachusetts itself, "that there 
are any that hunt after independence is the greatest slan- 
der on the province." Jefferson averred that before the 
Declaration of Independence he had never heard a whisper 
of disposition to separate from Great Britain. Washing- 
ton said in October, 1774, "I am well satisfied that no 
such thing as independence is desired by any thinking 
man in all North America ; on the contrary that it is the 
ardent wish of the warmest advocates for liberty that 
peace and tranquillity on constitutional grounds will be 
restored, and the horrors of civil discord prevented." 



72 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

The New York Congress, in an address to Washington 
after his assumption of the command, declared that the 
fondest wish of every American soul was an accommoda- 
tion with the mother country ; and Washington in his 
reply recognized the re-establishment of peace and har- 
mony between the mother country and the colonies as 
the ultimate object of his undertaking. New Hampshire, 
Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, New Jersey, spoke 
in the same strain as New York. Massachusetts, the very 
hotbed of revolution, in her address to the king, spoke of 
the restoration of union and harmony between Great 
Britain and her colonies as indispensable and necessary 
to the welfare and happiness of both. John Adams was 
warned by his associates in the movement at Philadelphia 
that if he uttered the word independence he was undone, 
for the idea was as unpopular in Pennsylvania and in all 
the middle and southern states as the Stamp Act itself. 
He confesses that when he broached the idea he was 
avoided as a man infected with leprosy. Even years after 
he said, " For my own part there was not a moment 
during the revolution when I would not have given all 
I possessed for a restoration to the state of things that 
existed before the contest began, provided we could have 
a sufficient security for its continuance." If some of these 
professions were hollow, that only proves the strength of 
the general feeling which demanded the tribute. Did the 
authors of the revolution aim at independence, or did 
they not? If they did not, they could hardly have been 
groaning under systematic oppression ; nothing less than 
which, moderate men would say, can justify revolution 
and civil war. If they did, the British government ap- 
parently may claim to be absolved so far as they are 



II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 73 

concerned, since what tliey sought was a thing which by 
their own showing the vast majority of their own people 
abhorred, as well as a thing which by its recognized duty 
the British government was bound to refuse. In fact the 
panegyrical historians stand not for two pages on the 
same foot ; in one page they applaud the patriot for aim- 
ing at independence, in the next they represent constitu- 
tional redress as his sole aim. 

Separation, again be it said, was inevitable. It was too 
likely that, the vision of statesmanship being clouded as 
it was respecting the relation of colonies to the mother 
country, the separation would be angry and violent. Still 
it might conceivably have been amicable, and that dark 
page might possibly have been torn from the book of 
destiny. Woe, we must say, to them by whom the of- 
fence came and through whose immediate agency, cul- 
pable in itself, the two great families of our race were 
made and to a deplorable extent have remained enemies 
instead of being friends, brethren, and fellow-workers in 
the advancement of their common civilization. Woe to 
the arbitrary and bigoted king whose best excuse is that 
he had not made himself a ruler instead of being what 
nature intended him to be, a ploughman. Woe to Gren- 
ville, who though not wicked or really bent on depriving 
the colonies of their rights, but on the contrary most 
anxious after his fashion to promote their interests, was 
narrow, pedantic, overbearing, possessed with extravagant 
ideas of the authority of Parliament, and unstatesmanlike 
enough to insist on doing because it was technically law- 
ful that which the sagacity of Walpole had on the ground 
of practical expediency refused to do. Woe above all to 



74 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

Charles Townsliend, who, with his vain brilliancy and his 
champagne speeches, repeated in the face of recent and de- 
cisive experience the perilous experiment and recklessly 
renewed the quarrel. Woe to Lord North, and all the 
more because in stooping to do the will of the king he 
was sinning against the light of good nature and good 
sense in himself. Woe even to Mansfield, whose supremely 
legal intellect too ably upheld the letter of the law against 
policy and the right. Woe to the Parliament — a parlia- 
ment be it ever remembered of rotten boroughs and of 
nominees not of the nation — which carelessly or inso- 
lently supported the evil resolution of the ministry and 
the court. Woe to the Tory squires who shouted for the 
war, to the Tory parsons who preached for it, and to the 
Tory bishops who voted for it in the House of Lords. 
Woe to the pamphleteers of prerogative, such as Johnson, 
whose vituperative violence added fuel to the flame. But 
woe also to the agitators at Boston, who, with the design 
of independence unavowed and of which they themselves 
were perhaps but half conscious, did their utmost to push 
the quarrel to extremity and to quench the hope of 
reconciliation. Woe to the preachers of Boston, who 
whether from an exaggerated dread of prelacy or to win 
the favour of the people made themselves the trumpeters 
of discord and perverted the gospel into a message of 
civil war. Woe to contraband traders if there were any, 
who sought in fratricidal strife relief from trade restric- 
tions ; to debtors if there were any, who sought in it a 
sponge for debt. Woe to all on either side who under 
the influence of passion, interest, or selfish ambition 
fomented the quarrel which rent asunder the English 
race. 



II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 75 

Of the fomenters of the quarrel in New England the 
chief was Samuel Adams, who, we can scarcely doubt, 
whatever might be his professions, had set his heart on the 
achievement of independence ; had been laying his plans 
and enlisting his associates, such as the wealthy Hancock 
and the impetuous Otis, for that purpose ; had welcomed 
rather than dreaded the dispute, and preferred the mortal 
issue to a reconciliation. Tliis man had failed in business 
as a maltster and as a tax collector, but he had succeeded 
as a political agitator and has found a shrine in American 
history as a patriot saint. Though an enthusiast, he was 
not wanting in the astuteness of the politician. The 
latest of his American biographers cannot help suimising 
that his Puritan conscience must have felt a twinge when 
in the very time at which he had devoted himself body 
and soul to breaking the link that bound America to Eng- 
land, he was coining for this or that body phrases full of 
reverence for the king and rejecting the thought of in- 
dependence. He had a paternal feud with Hutchinson, 
afterwards Governor of Massachusetts, a man whose repu- 
tation long lay buried under patriot vituperation, but who 
is now admitted by fair-minded writers to have been him- 
self a patriot, taking the line opposite to that of Samuel 
Adams, and seeking to the utmost of his power peace with 
justice. 

The chief fomenter of the quarrel in the South, not less 
glorified than Samuel Adams, was Patrick Henry. This 
man also had tried various ways of earning a livelihood, 
and had failed in all. He was a bankrupt at twentj^-three, 
and lounged in thriftless idleness, till he found that 
though he could not live by industry, he could live by 
his eloquent tongue. The circle in which as a Virginian 



76 THK IMTKn STATES. oiixr. 

not of the highest class he fornunl his st;\tesniaiiship is 
described l\v an American biographer as ** having com- 
prised an occasional clergyman, jxHlagogne, or legislator ; 
snu\ll planters, and small traders ; sjx>rtsmen, loafers, 
slaves and the drivers of slaves, and nioiv than all this the 
bucolic sons of old Virginia, the good-natmvd. illiterate, 
thriftless Caucasian consumers of tobacco and whiskey, 
who cordially consenting that all the hard work should be 
done by the children of Ham, were thus left free to com- 
mune together in endless debiite in the tavern jx>rch, or 
on the shady side of the country store." In Virginia 
admission to the legal profession might be gained without 
laborious study of the law. Henry's first exploit as a 
barrister was a successful defence of the spoliation of the 
clei^y, an unpopular order, by an appeal to public passion 
against legal rights Civil disconl brought liim at once 
1765. to tlie front. His famous speech against the tyranny of 
Gt?oi^ in is often recited : — "Is life so dear, or peace 
so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and 
slavery? Forbid it. Almighty God. I know not what 
course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty 
or give me death." When he said, "Is life so dear, or 
peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of ch;uns 
and slavery," he stood, as an eyewitness has told us, in tlie 
attitude of a condemned galley slave, loaded witli fetters, 
awaiting his doom : his form was bowed, his \vTists were 
crossed, his manacles were almost visible as he stood like 
an embodiment of helplessness and agony. After a 
solemn pause he raised liis eyes and chained hands 
towards heaven, and prayed in words and tones that 
thrilled every heart, "Forbid it. Almighty God." Men- 
tally struggling with the tyranny, he looked, the same 



REVOLU'nON, IXUEFENDEXCK, AND UXIOJf. 77 

rjfcHS tells u-s, like "Laocoon in a death straggle with 
: /J coiling serjjents." "Tlie sound of hLs voice was like 
that of a Sj^artan psean on the field of Platsea, and as each 
syllable of the word ' Liberty ' echoed through the build- 
ing liis fetters were shivered, hLs arms were pulled apart, 
and the links of his chain were scattered to the winds. 
He stood like a Roman Senator defying Caesar, while the 
unconquerable spirit of Cato of Utica flashed from every 
feature, and he closed the grand appeal with the solemn 
words, ' Or give me death,' wldch sounded with the awful 
cadence of a hero's dirge, fearless of death, and victorious 
in death ; and he suited the action to the word by a blow 
upon the left breast with the right hand, which seemed to 
drive the dagger to the patriot's heart." 

It is no wonder that Patrick Henry could so vividly 
portray to his audience the attitude of a slave. From the 
beginning to the end of his life he was a slaveholder, he 
bought slaves, he sold slaves, and by his will, with his 
cattle, he bequeathed slaves. A eulogist says of him that 
he could buy or sell a horse or a negro as well as anybody. 
That lie was in some degree conscious of the inconsist- 
ency does not alter the fact. Other patriot orators be- 
sides Patrick Henry, when they lavished the terms slave 
and slavery in their revolutionar}' harangues, might have 
reflected that they had only to look round them in order 
to see what real slaves and slavery were. 

Massachusetts, where the fire broke out, was in a specially 
inflammable state. John Adams in a paper embodied in 
his diary describes the multitude of taverns swarming with 
busy politicians, who he says were more in number than 
the people who attended to their own business. The 
constitutional sensitiveness and contentiousness called 



78 THE UNITED STATES. chaf. 

forth by the dispute about the Stamp Act had upon the 
repeal of that act calmed dowii but had not died out. By 
this time the legal profession was fully fledged. Lawyers 
had taken the lead in political life and they carried into 
it the spirit of litigation. A great many law suits were 
going on. Even the discourses on polemical theology 
which the people constantly heard from the pulpit would 
tend to make them argumentative and contentious. Pat- 
riotism of the classical type was fashionable in England, 
and the fashion had spread to the colony. Brutus and 
Cassius were the model patriots of the hour ; rhetoric was 
always conjuring with their names. Wilkesbarre, the 
name of a town in Pennsylvania, is a quaint memorial of 
the settlers' reverence for those two great tribunes of the 
people, Wilkes and Barrd, on the moral glories of the first 
of whom it is needless to dwell ; while the second, the 
author of a famous stroke of rhetoric against the false 
claim of the mother country to colonial gratitude, made 
his way through a career of fiery patriotism to the Clerk- 
ship of the Pells, one of the fattest sinecures of corruption. 
The Puritan clergy were angered by the concession of 
legal toleration to Roman Catholicism in Quebec and were 
always in dread of prelatic invasion. There was a daily 
source of irritation in the tightened pressure of commercial 
restrictions and the demeanour of royal officers engaged in 
enforcing them. The disputes about fixed salaries for 
governors and other crown officers were also in an angry 
state. The presence of a soldier}-, alien to a city of 
Puritan merchants like Boston, filled up the measure of 
exasperation, for such a garrison was sure to bear itself 
haughtily towards the people. 

When fortune frowns everything goes wrong. Of all 



11. DEVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION, 79 

the disasters the greatest was the eclipse of Chatham which 
left the political firmament to Townshend's malignant star. 
Next to this was the social catastrophe of Franklin, the one 
man who being revered in England as well as in America 
might have mediated with some chance of success, and 
to whose advice George Grenville had in fact resorted. 
The private letters of Governor Hutchinson were betrayed 1773. 
into his hands. He must have known and he did know 
that they had been stolen, or at least improperly obtained, 
and that he had no right to use them. When he sent 
them to Boston under the formal seal of confidence, he can 
hardly have failed to surmise that by the men to whom he 
sent them that seal would be broken. His plea that he 
acted in the interest of peace, hoping to convince his fel- 
low colonists that evil counsels came not from England 
but from their own quarter, cannot be seriously enter- 
tained. Its hollowness confirms his condemnation. That 
he believed himself to be doing good may be admitted, it 
cannot be admitted that he believed himself to be doing 
right. English gentlemen were licentious and some of 
them were politically corrupt, but they had a keen sense 
of social honour. To complete the disaster, the duty of 
dealing with the case fell not to the lot of a man of char- 
acter and dignity but of Wedderburn, a low adventurer, 
branded at his death by the king himself as the greatest 
scoundrel in the realm, whose brutalities made of Franklin 
a deadly foe. Another piece of ill luck was the Opposition 
leadership of Fox, a debauchee in politics as in private life, 
whose reckless violence and revolting displays of sympathy 
with the Americans even when they had France for an ally, 
could only confirm the obstinacy of the king and his min- 
isters and identify their cause in the eyes of the nation 



80 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

with that of the honour of the country. Sir Gilbert Elliot 
was probably right in saying that North might have fallen 
long before if he had not been propped by the unpatriotic 
behaviour of Fox. Burke, as Fox's partner, hardly escapes 
a share of the same censure. Fox behaved in the same 
way at the outbreak of the French Revolution. 

The restrictions upon colonial trade and manufactures 
were a cause for the most reasonable discontent. The 
restrictions on trade might be excused by the dominant 
fallacies of a protectionist era and palliated by the com- 
mercial privileges and bounties which the colonies enjoyed. 
Those on manufactures were without palliation or excuse, 
imposed solely in the interest of the selfish manufacturer 
at home. These grievances, if redress had been obstinately 
refused, would have justified revolt. But they are not put 
forward as a ground of revolt in the American Declaration 
of Independence. The Stamp Act having been repealed, 
all the duties except that on tea having been removed, and 
a pledge against their re-imposition having been given, the 
tea duty was the sole remaining issue. Was this a suffi- 
cient reason for overthrowing a government under which 
all admitted that general liberty was enjoyed, for shatter- 
ing an empire of the greatness of which all professed to be 
proud, and for bringing on a country the havoc, moral as 
well as material, of civil war? It is true that in the case 
of the tea duty, as in that of Hampden's assessment to ship 
money, what was to be considered was the principle, not 
the amount. But ship money was not merely a wrongful 
impost, it was the entering wedge of unparliamentary taxa- 
tion destined to furnish the means of a system of govern- 
ment in church and state fatal to the political liberties and 
to the spiritual life of the nation. Not Grenville, not even 



II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 81 

Townshend, not George III himself had conceived any such 
design ; though the arbitrary tendencies of the king at least 
were soon called forth by the conflict. There seems to be 
no reason for believing that either Grenville's or Town- 
shend's policy was originally inspired by the king. Nor 
was there ever a man less likely to play Strafford than 
Lord North. Would it not have been right before drawing 
the fratricidal sword to be sure that no hope of peaceful 
redress was left? Why should not the tea duty have been 
repealed as the other duties and the Stamp Act had been 
repealed? Its retention was understood in America to 
have been carried in the cabinet by a bare majority. A 
circular from the Home Secretary assured the colonies that 
the duties would not be re-imposed, and if the ground 
assigned was that of mere commercial expediency and not 
that of constitutional principle, the assurance was not the 
less practically valid. Colonial right had powerful advo- 
cates in Parliament. It had Rockingham with Burke at 
his side. It had Chatham whenever he should emerge 
from the cloud. British merchants had thronged the 
lobbies of the House of Commons on the night of the repeal 
of the Stamp Act and hailed Conway, who moved the 
repeal, as a delivering angel. But what those who man- 
aged the populace of Boston at heart desired was not con- 
stitutional redress, it was independence. On the passing 
of the Stamp Act, among other excesses the Stamp Office 
at Boston was levelled, the house of the stamp distributor 
was wrecked, and he was compelled by the mob to resign 
his office and to swear beneath the tree upon which his 
effigy was hanged never to resume his post; the houses of 
two officials connected with the Admiralty Court of the 
Custom House were rifled, the records of tlie Admiralty 



82 THE UNITED STATES. cii.u'. 

Court burnt; the mansion of Lieutenant Governor Hutch- 
inson was destroyed, his plate, his furniture, his pictures, 
and his fine library were plundered and burnt, and the 
owner scarcely escaped with his life. On the passing of 
the tea duty outrage was renewed. The custom house 
officers were assailed by parties armed with bludgeons and 
compelled to fly, officers were tarred and feathered, com- 
missioners were hung in effigy. The " Tories," as the 
friends of government were nicknamed, were everywhere 
pursued with insult by the Patriot party who borrowed 
from the party of the English Revolution the honoured 
name of Whigs. A reign of terror was directed against all 
the ministers of the law; merchants who had imported 
goods from England were compelled by the populace to 
give them up to be destroyed or to be re-shipped. One 
who sold English goods was stoned through the streets. 
Sedition was preached from the popular pulpit. Under 
extraordinary provocation a party of soldiers fired, killing 
five rioters and wounding six. This was the " Boston 
Massacre," celebrated by mourning services in chapels 
hung with crape. Praise is claimed for the citizens because 
they forbore to hang the soldiers. But had they hanged a 
soldier, it was clear that to avenge his blood the last pow- 
der of the empire must have been burned ; and John 
Adams showed not less of policy than of chivalry in 
appearing for the defence. Presently a revenue cutter 
• was fired, after shooting and badly wounding the com- 
1773. mander. At last came the " Boston Tea Party" in which 
a cargo of tea, the property of merchants trading under 
the imperial flag, was thrown into the bay. A government 
thus bearded and insulted has its choice between abdica- 
tion and repression. In this case abdication would have 



II. REVOLUTION, INI)Erp:NDENCE, AND UNION. 8:J 

been the wiser course, but repression was the more natural. 
Americans at the present day would not apjjaud violence 
as their historians applaud the " Boston Tea Party." If 
the temper of the English Tory was tyrannical, neither 
tliat of the New England Puritan nor that of the Virgin- 
ian slaveholder was mild. 

In what order and degree the various causes of the 
catastrophe for which the government or the mother 
country was responsible — resentment at illegal taxation, 
soreness under commercial restraints, anger aroused by 
violent measures of repression, the galling presence of an 
unwelcome soldiery, and imperial arrogance — may have 
combined with republican aspiration on the part of 
colonial leaders and the spread of a revolutionary spirit, it 
is impossible to say. All that can be said is that the 
catastrophe was sure to come and sure to be disastrous. 

The measures of repression, in any view, deserve the 
censure which has been passed on them. They were 
passionate, indiscriminate, and insulting ; bolts of blind 
wrath launched across the Atlantic by men imperfectly 
infoi-med as to the situation and ignorant of the character 
of the people, as transoceanic rulers must always be. By 
closing the port of Boston scores of traders faithful to the 
government were struck. By the abrogation of the char- 
ter of Massachusetts every colony was made to feel its 
chartered rights imperilled. Worst of all was the revival 1774 
of a law passed in the hateful reign of Henry VIII, 
under which subjects accused of treason anywhere could 
be transported to England for trial. This not only 
threatened all colonists with the loss of safeguards for 
personal liberty but outraged their self-respect. Shoot 
people if you must, but do not hurt their feelings. If 



84 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

there was to be repression at all, troops enough should have 
been sent, aiKl the law should have been enforced against 
its violators at Boston without inflicting penalties on the 
innocent or menacing colonial liberties in general. How- 
ever, no repression could have been final ; its temporary 
success would have been the beginning not the end of woes. 
In entering on his attempt at coercion the King was 
assured that there was a strong party in the colonies on 
his side. There was without doubt a party opposed to revo- 
lution, and at the outset it included a large portion of the 
wealth and intelligence and pi'obably a large majority of 
the entire people. But the adherence of much of it 
to the crown was rather passive than enthusiastic, the 
commercial Quaker of Philadelphia desiring not to fight 
on either side but to be at peace. It was unorganized, 
and when the royal governors had been expelled it was 
without leaders. Still in the struggle which ensued as 
many as twenty-five thousand loyalists at the lowest com- 
putation, according to the best authority, were in arms for 
the crown, a number sufficient to give the conflict the 
character of a civil war between the parties in America as 
well as between the British and American sections of the 
Anglo-Saxon race. By the unwise violence of the king's min- 
isters, and afterwards by the blunders of his commanders 
and the excesses of his mercenary troops, the numbers of 
his party were much reduced. The military obstacles 
were great. The colonies were three thousand miles off, 
which in those days made supply, communication, and the 
direction of operations from a centre very difficult. They 
extended from north to south along nine hundred miles of 
country, woody for the most part and tangled, unfavour- 
able to regulars, favourable to a sharp-shooting militia. 



II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 85 

Those who said that the American militia would not stand 
before regulars had ground for what they said. In the 
open field the regulars won, generally with ease, but most 
of the fighting was not in open field, it was in wooded 
country, and the Americans were excellent marksmen. 
The king had no general. Wolfe and Clive were gone, 
Moore was a boy, Wellington a child, and India claimed 
Eyre Coote. Cornwallis was energetic and enterprising, 
he reaped laurels afterwards in India. Had he or Sir 
Guy Carleton commanded in chief there might have been 
a different tale to tell. Howe, who did command in chief, 
though brave was torpid ; probably he was not only torpid 
but half-hearted. As a member of parliament he had 
pledged himself to his constituents not to fight against 
the Americans, and he must have been fettered by that 
pledge. He was inspired also, it may be surmised, with 
the secret misgivings of North, whose conscience was all 
the time accusing him, and who sent forth his commander 
with a sword in one hand and the olive branch in the 
other, to the detriment alike of the olive branch and the 
sword. Nor had the king a war minister. The place of 
Chatham was filled by the narrow mind and bad temper 
of Lord George Germaine. Without a general or a war 
minister, the king was also without an army. Unable to 
raise soldiers enough in England he had to buy Hessians, 
who, though good troops, well-commanded, and not devoid 
of a certain sympathy with the cause of a king against 
rebels, were foreigners torn by sordid masters from their 
homes, and, as aliens and hirelings, hateful to the people 
whose homes they were sent to destroy. Such a necessity, 
ignominious in any war, worse than ignominious in a war 
with his own subjects, ought to have shown him that 



86 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

though the ])ride of the nation might be stung by Boston- 
ian insult and its pugnacity aroused, the object for whicli 
he fought was not truly national nor was the heart of the 
nation with him. Never, not even under Newcastle, did 
England make a worse show in the field. The court had 
also to contend with an opposition in parliament, weak 
at first in numbers but sure to be swelled by every reverse, 
and embittered enough by faction to strike at the ministry 
even through the honour of the country. It might have 
been known, too, that France and the other European 
enemies of England were watching the growing trouble 
with eager eyes. Yet events proved that success in the 
war, though unlikely, was not imjDOssible. That which 
was impossible was to continue to rule thirteen British 
communities subjugated by arms on the other side of the 
Atlantic. The forces of one part of the empire would 
have been forever expended in holding down the other 
part. In this, to say nothing of the colonists, the people 
of Great Britain would never have acquiesced. Had the 
colonies been really dependencies and the king absolute 
he might, like a Spanish or French despot, have sent out 
a viceroy with sufficient power. But the colonies being 
free and British government having become parliamen- 
tary, dominion was at an end. 

War evidently impending, the colonies obeyed a mani- 
fest necessity in federating for the purposes of mutual 
defence. Thus the American Federation was born in the 
same way as the Achaean League, the Swiss Bund, and the 
1774 United Netherlands. The powers which provincial jeal- 
1775. ousy would allow the Congress under the articles of con- 
federation were insufficient even for the limited object, 
since Congress had no authority itself to levy men or 



n. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 87 

impose taxes, but could only address requisitions to the 
several colonies without the means of enforcement. The 
voting was by states, and the assent of nine states was 
required, so that five states could paralyze action. The 
Federation in fact was little more than a league. Con- 
gress, however, assumed in a feeble way the character of a 
national government. It raised a continental army with 
officers bearing its commission and wearing its uniform of 
blue and buif. In time it unfurled its flag, the stars and 
stripes, the harbinger of the tricolour. Advice was given 
by it to the several colonies to erect themselves into states 
on a republican footing. This advice they easil}'^ followed. 
Already their constitutions were essentially republican, 
already their political spirit was essentially republican, 
and they had only, where it was needed, to strike off the 
monarchical apex of the structure and substitute an elec- 
tive governor for the governor sent out by the crown. In 
a hall at Philadelphia, rendered sacred to all American 
hearts by the act, was signed a declaration of independence; 
it was signed with sorrow and reluctance at the time even 
by some of those who had been foremost in the constitu- 
tional fray, though descent from one of those who sub- 
scribed it is now a title of nobility. Colonial resolution 
had been screwed to the sticking point by Tom Paine, the 
stormy petrel of three countries, with his pamphlet " Com- 
mon Sense," issued in the nick of time, coarsely but forci- 
bly written and well spiced with rhetoric about the " royal 
brute." The Declaration of Independence, one of the 1770. 
most famous documents in the muniment room of history, 
bespeaks the hand of the philosophic Jefferson. It opens 
with sweeping aphorisms about the natural rights of man 
at which political science now smiles, and which, as Amer- 



88 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

ican abolitionists did not fail to point out at a later day, 
might seem strange when framed for slave-holding com- 
munities by a publicist who himself held slaves. It j)i'0- 
ceeds to recount in a highly rhetorical strain all the offen- 
sive acts of George III and his government, designating 
them as " a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing 
invariably the same object and evincing a design to reduce 
the colonists under absolute despotism " and asserting that 
" they all had as their direct object the establishment of an 
absolute tyranny " — propositions which history cannot 
accept. It blinks the fact that many of the acts, styled 
steps of usurpation, were measures of repression which 
however unwise or excessive had been provoked by popu- 
lar outrage. It speaks of the patient sufferings of colonists 
who had sacked the houses and maltreated the persons of 
the king's officers, burnt his revenue cutter, and flung the 
goods of merchants trading under his flag into the sea. 
One count in the indictment is the Act declaring' the Brit- 
ish Parliament invested with power to legislate for the col- 
onies in all cases. Yet in this Act, framed by Rockingham 
and Burke as a pendant to the repeal of the Stamp Act 
the colonists had certainly acquiesced. The archives of 
English Puritanism it seems had been searched for a pre- 
cedent, and the precedent adopted was probably the Grand 
Remonstrance. But the Grand Remonstrance was founded 
on fact, since the violent acts of Charles I, Strafford, and 
Laud were really steps in the execution of a plan for the 
establishment of arbitrary government. The author of the 
Declaration of Independence proposed to insert a clause 
denouncing George III as responsible for the slave trade, 
and accusing him of "thereby waging cruel war against 
human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of lifj 



II, REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 89 

and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never 
offended him, captivating them and carrying them into 
slavery in another hemispliere, or to more miserable death 
in the transportation thither." " This piratical warfare," 
so ran the clause, "the opprobrium of Infidel Powers, is 
the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain." But 
this was too much not only for the slave-owners of Vir- 
ginia but for the slave-traders of New England. Had 
George III framed the Virginian or Carolinian slave codes ? 
Such checks as had been put by Virginia or as she had 
proposed to put on the importation of slaves are admitted 
by candid American historians to have had not a moral 
but an economical motive. Jefferson himself, though an 
opponent and doubtless a sincere opponent of slavery, 
never emancipated his own slaves. 

The war opened at Boston, where General Gage, now 
its military governor, lay with a small army of occupation 
and repression, and it opened in a way ominous of the 
final result and significant of the means by which the 
result was to be brought about. Gage sent out a detach- April 
ment to seize rebel stores at Lexington. The militia of 1775. 
the country, called Minute Men because they were always 
to be in readiness, excellent sharp-shooters, swarmed out, 
surrounded the detachment, and forced it to fall back with 
loss on Boston. The next engagement was more ominous 
still. The patriots occupied Breed's Hill (not Bunker's June 
Hill, but an adjoining height), which commanded Boston, ^775 
and fortified it with a redoubt and breastwork. It seems 
that they might have been dislodged by manoeuvring. 
But the royal commander, in his pipe-clay pedantry and 
pride, chose to lead his men on a hot summer's day with 
heavy knapsacks on their backs up the front of the hill 



90 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

against the breastwork. Thrice they mounted in face 
of the fire of the sharp-sliooters, who from under cover 
securely shot tliem down. The third charge took the posi- 
tion, and a captured gun stands on the citadel of Quebec 
as the trophy and proof of royalist victor}^ ; but the loss 
had been immense and the moral advantage Avas with the 
insurgents. Gage now gave place to Howe, and Howe 
found himself surrounded in Boston by swarms of Minute 
Men who were presently under the command of a good 

1775. general. The appointment of Washington as commander- 
in-chief of the Continental forces was a politic compliment 
to Virginia, but it was also by far the best appointment 
that could be made. Washington when a stripling had 
made a wonderful mark, not only as a soldier in border 
war against the Indians, but as a negotiator; while in 
Braddock's disaster he had shown a fortitude and stead- 
fastness in defeat which were to be inestimable in his pres- 
ent place. Having suffered in military grade and in 
feeling so as to be led to resign his position by the 
exclusive precedence of the royal officers, he would not 
be unwilling to measure swords with them in the field. 
He found an army undisciplined, impatient of control, 
ill-equipped, unprovided with ammunition. But he man- 
aged to hold this army together, to present a front which 
to his surprise his unenterprising enemy respected, and 
at last on a dark night to seize and fortify an eminence 
which commanded the place and rendered it no longer 

March tenable. Howe evacuated Boston, where redcoats never 

1776. ^ 
appeared more. 

In leaving Boston the ro3^al fleet took with it, according 

to Mr. Sabine, eleven hundred loyalists, including women 

and children, the first instalment of a great loyalist migra- 



II. KEVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 91 

tion. The number included, of members of the Council 
and officials, one hundred and two ; of clergymen, eighteen ; 
of inhabitants of country towns, one hundred and five ; of 
merchants and other residents in Boston, two hundred 
and thirteen ; of farmers, mechanics, and traders, three 
hundred and eighty-two. The case of these people is not 
to be settled, nor is the witness which they bore to their 
cause to be annulled, by designating them as Tories. Was 
it just that they should be outlawed, pillaged, driven from 
their homes, maltreated, condemned to the death of trai- 
tors by men who had but yesterday been conspirators, out- 
wardly professing allegiance to the government to which 
the loyalists adhered, and were still without any recognized 
government of their own ? Were not the loyalists Ameri- 
cans, and did not their wrongs exceed any of those done 
to Americans by the king? On the eve of the civil war 
in England, Sir William Waller the Parliamentarian, 
wrote to Sir Ralph Hopton the Royalist : " My affections 
to you are so unchangeable that hostility itself cannot 
violate my friendship to your person, but I must be true 
to the cause wherein I serve. The old limitation of usque 
ad aras holds still. . . . The great God, who is the searcher 
of my heart, knows with what reluctance I go upon this 
service, and with what perfect hatred I look upon war 
without an enemy. But I look upon it as oinis dommi, 
and that is enough to silence all passion in me. The God 
of Peace in His good time send us peace, and in the mean- 
time fit us to receive it! We are both on the stage and 
we must act the parts that are assigned us in this tragedy. 
Let us do it in a way of honour, and without personal 
animosities." Such was the spirit of men mournfully 
obeying in a great cause the inevitable call of civil war. 



92 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

There was little of it on either side in the American 
Revolution. 

The loyalists retaliated when they could; where they 
were strong they became the aggressors, and as their 
party included, with some of the chiefs of society, many 
of the lowest and wildest class, they rivalled and probably 
outvied their opponents in atrocity. The civil strife grew 
more murderous and viler as it went on. " The animosities 
between Whigs and Tories," wrote the worthy American 
General Greene, "render their situation truly deplorable. 
The Whigs seem determined to extirpate the Tories and 
the Tories the Whigs. Some thousands have fallen in 
this way in this quarter and the evil rages with more 
violence than ever. If a stop cannot be put to the massa- 
cres, the country will be depopulated in a few months, as 
neither Whig nor Torj'^ can win." " The people of the 
South," says Chief Justice Marshall, " felt all the miseries 
which are inflicted by war in its m^ost savage form. Being 
almost equally divided between the two contending parties, 
reciprocal injuries had gradually sharpened their resent- 
ment against each other and had armed neighbour against 
neighbour until it had become a war of extermination. As 
the parties alternately triumphed, opportunity was alter- 
nately given for the exercise of their vindictive passions." 
Even in the Wars of the Roses, amidst the mutual butch- 
eries of the aristocratic factions the common people had 
been spared and had spared each other. Nor were the 
royal officers now behind in cruelty. They bombarded 
seaboard towns, and in their executions of relapsed rebels 
violated the humanities if not the laws of ordinary war. 
Between rebellion and belligerency there is a doubtful 
period during which the agents of government think 



II. KEVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 93 

themselves licensed to give way to their passions under 
the name of crushing treason. Among the loyalists of the 
baser sort some exercised brigandage in the name of the 
crown. The devilry was completed by the introduction 
of Indians, whose ferocity no commander could restrain, 
though Carleton and Burgoyne did their best. They had 
been enlisted first by the colonists, so that Chatham's 
tremendous invective was misplaced saving as such a 
policy might be more disgraceful to a government than to 
rebels. The horrors of Wyoming, painted both in verse 
and prose, were the work of Indians led on by a band of 
Tories who had themselves been driven from their homes. 

John Adams has given us an account of the doings at 
Philadelphia while the politicians were hatching the revo- 
lution. In the evening at Mr. Mifflin's there was "an 
elegant supper and we drank sentiments till eleven o'clock. 
Lee and Harrison were very high. Lee had dined with 
Mr. Dickenson and drank Burgundy the whole afternoon." 
From nine in the morning till three in the afternoon the 
delegates attended to business, " then they adjourned and 
went to dine with some of the nobles of Pennsylvania at 
four o'clock, and feasted upon ten thousand delicacies, and 
sat drinking Madeira, Claret, or Burgundy till six or seven, 
and then went home fatigued to death with business, 
company, and care." It is a pity that in such cases there 
cannot mingle with the flavour of the Claret and Burgundy 
a foretaste of the bitterness of civil war. But the politi- 
cians who quaff the wine too seldom drink of the other 
cup. 

Meantime the colonists had grasped at Canada, which 
they thought would fall into their arms. Among the 
charges originally levelled by New England against the 



94 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

king's government was that of having by the Quebec Act 
established in Canada Roman Catholicism, which New 
England stigmatized as a religion that had '' drenched 
Great Britain in blood and disseminated impiety, bigotry, 
persecution, murder, and rebellion through every part of 
the world.'' Afterwards the colonists, desiring to draw 
Canada into their league, addressed her in a different 
strain, setting forth how under the blessed influence of 
republican liberty Roman Catholicism and Protestantism 
might dwell together in the sweetest peace. But the 
Canadian clergy, having both manifestoes before them, 
believed in the genuineness of the first, which was more 
in accordance with the practice and even with the laws of 
Massachusetts. They advised their people to adhere to 
Great Britain or at least to be neutral, and their influence 
was seconded by the conduct of Sir Guy Carleton, a wise, 
brave, and popular governor. The Americans finding 
honeyed words unavailing, invaded Canada and took Mon- 
treal, but they were repulsed in a daring attack to storm 
Quebec in which their general, Montgomery, fell and 

Yn^^^ Canada was lost to the Union. 

From Boston the scene of war shifted to New York, 
where royalism was strong, and neutrality still stronger, 
especially in the commercial class, while by occupying that 
position the confederacy might be cut in two. Washington 
had here concentrated his forces and fortified himself. On 

Aug. Long Island patriotism for the first time met discipline in 
the open field and was driven in flight before it. Had 
Howe followed up his victory there probably would have 
been an end of the Continental army, whatever local 
resistance might have survived. But Howe, there can be 
little doubt, was wavering as well as lethargic and instead 



177(5. 



II. EEVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 95 

of pressing his enemy he went to luncheon. New York 
was taken. Some of the patriots liad proposed to burn it, 
" since," as General Greene said, " two-thirds of the prop- 
erty of the city and suburbs belonged to the Tories." It 
was fired, but was saved by the captors and remained the 
centre of royal operations to the end of the war. Howe's 
subsequent conduct seems to have been marked with a 
sluggishness and irresolution which the energy of his 
lieutenant, Cornwallis, could not redeem. Washington 
was allowed to pluck victory and reputation out of the 
jaws of defeat by surprising two battalions of Hessians 
who were sleeping off their Christmas debauch at Trenton, 
and overwhelming after a masterly movement two isolated 
regiments at Princeton. All this restored the confidence 
of the revolutionists and raised their military character in 
Europe, notably in France, while the excesses of Howe's 
mercenaries turned the Jerseys back from royalism to rev- 
olution. At last Howe moved, and having defeated Wash- Sept. 

1777. 
ington at the battle of the Brandywine entered Philadel- 
phia, the capital of the confederacy, where he was well 
received and passed a highly festive winter. Washington 
attempted a surprise but was again defeated, though not 
with ease, at the battle of Germantown. Notwithstanding 
Washington's reverses, with him remained the honours of 
the campaign. 

Howe, feeling, probably, that in spite of his successes 
in the field the attempt to subdue the colonists was a fail- 
ure, and having achieved as little by diplomatic offers of 
reconciliation as by force, went home and was succeeded 
b}' Sir Henry Clinton. Washington had taken up his 
quarters for the winter near his enemy, in an unassailable 
position among the hills at Valley Forge. This winter at 1778. 



lit) THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

Valley Forge is the most heroic episode of the revolution. 
Washington's men, more the men of Washington than 
the men of the revolution or the Congress, were left 
without meat for clays together, sometimes without bread ; 
without blankets, so that they had to sit up by their camp- 
fires to keep themselves warm ; and without shoes, so that 
the traces of their march over the snow were marked with 
blood. Yet they showed of what race they were by hold- 
ing together and making their foe beware of tliem. Dur- 
ing the winter they went through a course of drill under 
Steuben, a Prussian, and other foreign officers, which put 
them on a level with the king's soldiers, their natural 
qualities being the same. 

Washington was to the confederacy all in all. Without 
him it would have been ten times lost, and the names of 
the politicians who had drawn the country into the conflict 
would have gone down to posterity linked with defeat and 
shame. History has hardly a stronger case of an indispen- 
sable man. His form, like all other forms of the revolu- 
tion, has no doubt been seen through a golden haze of 
panegyric. We can hardly number among the greatest 
captains a general who acted on so small a scale and who, 
though he was the soul of the war, never won a battle. 
In that respect Carlyle, who threatened " to take George 
down a peg or two," might have made good his threat. 
But he could not have stripped Washington of any part 
of his credit for patriotism, wisdom, and courage ; for the 
union of enterprise with prudence ; for integrity and truth- 
fulness ; for simple dignity of character ; for tact and for- 
bearance in dealing with men ; above all for serene 
fortitude in the darkest hour of his cause and under trials 
from the perversity, insubordination, jealousy, and perfidy 



II. REVOLUTION, INDErENDENCE, AND UNION. 97 

of those around him severer than any defeat. Some Amer- 
ican writers seem anxious to prove that Washington's 
character is essentially different from that of an English 
gentleman. About this we need not dispute. The char- 
acter of an English gentleman is certainly devoid of any 
traits that might be derived either from a plantation or 
from war with Indians in the backwoods. Yet an Eng- 
lish gentleman sees in Washington his ideal as surely as he 
does not see it in Franklin, Samuel Adams, or Patrick 
Henry. It has been truly said that Washington and Well- 
ington have much in common. Wellington contending 
with Spanish perversity and ministerial incompetence 
reminds us by his calmness and self-control of Washington 
contending with the folly and dishonesty of Congress and 
the fractiousness of the state militia. They write in the 
same even, passionless, and somewhat formal style, the 
expression of a mind always master of itself. In both of 
them there was, though under control, the strong temper 
which is almost inseparable from force. Wellington 
might be more of an aristocrat than Washington, less of a 
democrat he could hardly be. Washington insisted that 
his officers should be gentlemen, not men fit to be shoe- 
blacks. He drew a most undemocratic distinction be- 
tween the officer and the private soldier. His notions 
about the private soldier are those of an old world discipli- 
narian. He says that the soldier should be satisfied to 
serve for his food, clothes, and pay, and complains that he 
cannot lay on the back of the insubordinate patriot more 
than one hundred lashes, holding that five hundred are not 
too many. The other army leaders. Gates and Lee, caballed 
against him and were abetted by politicians morbidly or 
perhaps selfishly jealous of military ascendancy. It appears 



98 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

that both Samuel and John Adams, if they did not in- 
trigue, were unfriendly to Washington and would willingly 
have seen liim superseded. Washington bore the attacks 
on him magnanimously, never allowing his personal wrongs 
to interfere with his duty nor ever thinking of abandoning 
his post. Perhaps in the whole conflict the three noblest 
things are the character of Washington, the behaviour of his 
army at Valley Forge, and the devotion of the better class / 
of loyalists. On Washington's death the flags of the Brit- 1 
ish fleet under Lord Bridport were half-masted. We owe 
the American Hildreth thanks for recording the fact. 

A plan had been formed by the British war office for 
a movement from Canada down the valleys of the Mohawk 
and the Hudson, so as to break the centre of the confed- 
eracy. Burgoyne, who seems to have been the originator 
of the plan, was put in command. He had won some 
distinction in war, but was more of a wit, a playwright, 
Sept. and a social star than a captain. Down the Hudson and 
Mohawk he came with six or seven thousand regulars, 
British and German, some Canadian auxiliaries, and a 
train of Indians. The voyal general at New York was to 
have moved out to meet him, but the desj)atch was not 
sent in time because, as tradition has it, Lord George 
Germaine had chosen to hurry off to his pleasures instead 
of waiting till the clerks had done their work. Burgoyne 
took a wrong course, lost himself in a tangled country, 
found no Clinton to meet him, was deserted by his Cana- 
dians and Indians, and was surrounded by the local militia, 
famous bush-fighters and riflemen, who poured out in 
defence of their own states. Here was seen the strength 
of the local resistance in contrast with the weakness of 
the confederation. Hemmed in by swarms of sharp- 



n. KEVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 99 

shooters, whose number was four times his own, and 
unable to get open battle, Burgoyne was forced to surren- 
der. This he did under a convention providing that he Oct. 
and his troops should be sent to England under parole 
not to serve against America. It occurred to Congre:?s 
that the troops, though they could not be used against 
America, might be used in setting other troops free ^or 
that service. On pretexts utterly frivolous and disowned 
by the American commander Congress broke the conven- 
tion, detained the troops, and against the laws of war tried 
to entice the men into its own service. It was a violation 
of public faith for which no real excuse has been offered. 
Nor did Congress stop here. It insisted that the sum 
which had been expended in provisions for the captured 
army in Continental paper should be repaid in gold three 
times the paper's worth, and this while it was treating the 
refusal of the paper as a crime. "Jay," ejaculated Gouver- 
neur Morris thirty years afterwards, " what a set of d — d 
scoundrels we had in that second Congress ! " " Yes," 
said Jay, " we had," and he knocked the ashes from his 
pipe. It seems that when Congress had sunk into impo- 
tence and discredit some of the best men left it to employ 
their energies in their own states, probably the best of all 
were in the field. From Gates and from Schuyler of New 
York, to whom Burgoyne surrendered, he and his troops 
received chivalrous treatment. When they got to Boston 
there was a change. Madame de Riedesel, the wife of the 
German general, complains that she was cruelly insulted 
by the Boston women. In her memoir we are told that 
the wife and young daughter of Captain Fenton, a royalist 
absentee, were stripped naked, tarred and feathered, and 
paraded through the city. The Americans on their side 



100 THE UNITED bTATES. ciiav. 

had too much reason to comphiin of the cruel treatment of 
prisoners at New York by royal commanders at New York 
who had no pity for those whom they still deemed rebels, 
or Tory officials made merciless by the rage of faction. 
Such is civil war. There is no test of the humanity of a 
nation so trying as civil war. We have to wait till a later 
period to see that the test miglit be borne. 

Clinton presently evacuated Philadelphia and fell back 
I77g on New York, which remained in the king's hands to the 
last. On the march he fought a drawn battle with Wash- 
ington at Monmouth Court House, in which the improved 
drill of Washington's soldiers showed its effect. He took 
with him from Philadelphia three thousand loyalists who 
dared not fall into the hands of the Whigs. Of those who 
remained behind a number were condemned to death, but 
two Quakers only were hanged. 

The Netherlands, when they rose against Spain and the 
Inquisition, had a cause terribly great and showed spirit 
as great as their cause. The cause in which the Ameri- 
cans rose against the imperial government was not so 
great if it was not largely rhetorical, and the amount of 
spirit wliich they showed was proportional. When from 
drinking patriotic toasts, declaiming against tyranny, 
tarring and feathering Tories, and hanging stamp collec- 
tors in ef^gjt it came to paying war contributions and 
facing the shot, enthusiasm declined. Of this Washing- 
ton became sensible as soon as he had assumed the com- 
mand. From the lines before Boston, 28th November. 
1775, he writes: "Such a dearth of public spirit and such 
want of virtue, such stock-jobbing and fertility in all the 
low arts to obtain advantages of one kind or another, in 
this great change of military arrangement, I never saw 



II, REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 101 

before, and pray God's mercy that I may never be witness 
to again." This wail runs througli his letters, growing 
more and more mournful to the end of the war, or at 
least till the arrival of French aid. From Valley Forge 
in 1778 he writes : " Men are naturally fond of peace, and 
there are symptoms that may authorize an opinion that the 
people of America are pretty generally weary of the 
present war. It is doubtful whether many of our friends 
might not incline to an accommodation on the grounds 
held out, or which may be, rather than persevere in a con- 
test for independence." From Philadelphia, 30th Decem- 
ber, 1778, he writes : " If I were called upon to draw a 
picture of the times and of men from what I have seen, 
heard and in part know, I should in one word say that 
idleness, dissipation, and extravagance seem to have laid 
fast hold of most of them ; that speculation, peculation, 
and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the 
better of every other consideration, and almost of every 
order of men ; that party disputes and personal quarrels 
are the great business of the day; while the momentous 
concerns of the empire, a great and accumulating debt, 
ruined finances, depreciated money, and want of credit 
which in its consequences is the want of everything, are 
but secondary considerations and postponed from day to 
day, from week to week, as if our affairs wore the most 
promising aspect." John Adams had oratorically decreed 
that the war should be violent and short, but oratory does 
not shorten war or make anything violent but passion. 
The eloquent opponents of the tea duty did not, like the 
opponent of ship-money, take the field. They were 
content with the part, to use a phrase adopted by Wash- 
ington, of chimney corner heroes. If John Adams could 



102 THE UNITED ISTATKS. c:ia-. 

sigh as he said he did for things as they had been bel'.). o 
the war, the people were not likely to feel that the change 
was worth much of their money or their blood. When 
the war came their way they would readily turn out, and 
fight well in their own sharp-shooting fashion in defence 
of their own states, but they would not readily turn out 
in the Continental cause even though the assembly of 
Virginia might offer to any patriot who would take arms 
to deliver the country from slavery three hundred acres of 
land and a healthy sound negro. If they did turn out it 
was for a fixed term, and at the end of that term they 
insisted upon taking their departure, notwithstanding it 
might be the eve of a battle, carrying with them their 
arms and ammunition, not assuredly because they lacked 
courage, but because they lacked zeal in the cause. " Sol- 
diers absent themselves from their duty in numbers, stay- 
ing at their homes, sometimes in the employment of their 
officers ; drawing pay, while they are working on their 
own plantations or for hire." The troops of Connecticut 
at one time were mostly on furlough, and Washington 
finds such a mercenary spirit pervading them that he could 
not be surprised at any disaster. Regiments are expected 
in vain, harvest and a thousand other excuses being given 
for delay. At a critical moment a militia is reduced 
from six thousand to less than two thousand. It takes 
all the exertion of the officers to induce a corps to stay 
six weeks on a bounty of ten dollars. Washington's 
army in short is always moulting ; there is not time 
to drill the men before they are gone, and discipline is 
impossible because if it was enforced they would go. 
Washington complains also of the want of patriotic feel- 
ing among the people. The conduct of the Jerseys, he 



II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 103 

says, " is most infamous ; instead of aiding him they are 
making their submission as fast as they can. Pennsylva- 
nian militiamen, instead of responding to the summons of 
the Council of Safety, exult at the approach of the enemy 
and over the misfortunes of their own friends. The dis- 
affection of Pennsylvania is beyond conception. The 
people bring supplies as readily to the royal army as to 
their own ; more readily in fact, since the royal army pays 
not in paper but cash." Officers appropriate the money 
for the payment of the troops. Cabals and intrigues 
about appointments, jealousies between soldiers from dif- 
ferent states, selfish interests of all kinds are stronger 
than adherence to the cause. There was the pride too, 
though Washington does not mention it, of the Virginian 
gentlemen who looked down on the New England trader 
not less than the officers of the royal army had looked 
down on those of the colonial militia. All this goes far 
towards justifying the king's judgment and that of his 
informants as to the strength of the resistance and the 
chances of the war. The army, Washington says, was 
at one time losing more by desertion than it gained by 
recruiting. Deserters, defaulters, and malingerers, of 
whom there were also plenty, had every excuse that the 
failure of the conmiissariat and the arsenals could give. 
Two thousand men at one time were without firelocks, 
and the supplies of food and clothing seem to have 
been always most defective. That his men should be 
starving, shivering, and marking their marches over the 
snow with their blood, while forestallers, regraters, and 
monopolists are flourishing, stings Washington to the soul. 
The end of the dealings of Congress with the army was 
that the army became a skeleton, and there was at last a 



104 THE UNITED STATES. cuAr. 

mutiny of the Pennsj'lvanian militia which was prevented 
from being fatal only by the personal ascendancy of the 
general. A sufficient force of regular troops, serving for 
adequate pay and pensions, was Washington's constant 
desire. Cromwell's insight taught him, after Edgehill, 
that instead of men serving only for pay he must form 
an army of men whose hearts were in the cause. Wash- 
ington's insight after a few months of command taught 
him that when enthusiasm had grown cold an army must 
be formed of men serving for good pay. " When men," 
he says, "are irritated and passion inflamed they fly 
hastily and cheerfully to arms ; but after the first emotions 
are over to expect the bulk of an army to be influenced by 
anything but self-interest is to look for what never did 
happen." Cromwell and Washington alike recognized 
the supremacy of discipline. " To lean on the militia," 
says Washington, " is to lean on a broken reed. Being 
familiar with the use of the musket they will fight under 
cover, but they will not attack or stand in the open 
field." 

States refused to tax themselves and Congress had no 
power to tax them. Its war budget was one of confisca- 
tions, forced requisitions, and paper money. From the 
printing press, its mint, issued ever increasing volumes of 
paper currency, the value of which as usual rapidly de- 
clined, and all the faster the more Congress and its parti- 
sans, like the French Jacobins after them, liad recourse to 
violence to make bad money pass for good. A hotel bill 
of seven hundred pounds was paid with three pounds cash. 
The phrase came into vogue, " Not worth a continental." 
At last, as Washington said, there was almost a stagna- 
tion of purchase. There could not fail to ensue a fearful 



II. KEVOLUTIUN, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 105 

disturbance of commerce and of commercial morality. 
Debts contracted in good money were paid in worthless 
paper. Washington was himself thus defrauded while he 
was serving the country without pay, a wrong of which he 
speaks with his usual magnanimity. Gambling and specu- 
lation naturally followed. Fortunes were made by knaves 
and riotous living went on while the army suffered and 
dwindled to a shadow. Years afterwards Tom Paine, no 
straight-laced economist, seriously demanded that any one 
who proposed to return to paper money should be punished 
with death. The inestimable clause in the American con- 
stitution forbidding legislation which would impair the 
faith of contracts, may perhaps be regarded in part as a 
memorial of those evil times. 

A fleet, Congress can scarcely be said to have had. 
But what local assistance, independently of the armies of 
the central government, did on land, privateers manned 
by the hardy seamen of New England did at sea. A num- 
ber of English merchantmen were captured in American 
waters, and Paul Jones in his Bonhomme Richard made 
himself the terror of the English coasts. The royal navy 
however presently asserted its superior power, and Ameri- 
can commerce was swept from the sea. 

The surrender of Burgoyne proved decisive, as it 
brought France to the aid of the Americans. Ever since 
her loss of Canada she had been intriguing through her 
agents in the colonies. From the outset of the war she 
had been sending secret aid to the revolutionists, and 
lying when expostulations were addressed to her. The 
motive of her government was enmity to England. But 
there was a section of her aristocracy which liad embraced 
political reform and even begun to dally with revolution, a 



106 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

pastime for which the salons afterwards paid dear. A 
youthful scion of this section, Lafayette, fired at the sight 
of American revolt, had gone forth on a republican crusade 
Feb. and become the companion in arms of Washington. After 
■ Burgoyne's surrender American envoys were able to per- 
suade the French government to make a treaty with the 
colonies and go to war with Great Britain, from whom 

1779. France had received not the slightest provocation. Spain 
was afterwards drawn in, not by sympathy with the Ameri- 
cans whom she regarded as dangerous neighbours to her 
American dependencies, but by the hope of recovering 

1780. Gibraltar; Holland by maritime jealousies and disputes. 
Thus England, in addition to her revolted colonists, had 
the greatest military power in Europe and the three great- 
est naval powers on her hands. She lost that command of 
the sea which had enabled her to crush the commerce of 
the colonists, to wear them out by pressure on the seaboard, 
and to choose her own point of attack. On the other hand 
her national spirit was aroused to do battle with her 
ancient foe. Chatham would have dropped the colonies 
and turned on France. Lord North, being no Chatham, 
sent out commissioners with overtures of reconciliation, 
offering the colonies representation in Parliament. Of 
course his attempt proved worse than vain. A great 
French fleet under d'Estaing soon appeared on the scene. 
A French army was to follow, and the French treasury 
supplied Congress with the hard cash of which it was by 
this time in the sorest need. Incompatibilities and mis- 
understandings between the French and their colonial 
allies put off the catastrophe, but tlie balance was decisively 
turned and the result was no longer in doubt. " To me," 
said Washington, August 20th, 1780, "it will appear 



II. KEVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 107 

miraculous if our affairs can maintain themselves much 
longer." " If," he added, " the temper and resources of 
the country will not admit of alteration, we may be reduced 
to seeing the cause in America upheld by foreign arms." 
That time had now come. 

It was in the dark hour before the arrival of French aid 
that treason entered into the heart of Benedict Arnold, the 
commander of the all-important lines upon the Hudson. 
Arnold had been one of the best of the American com- 
manders, perhaps the most daring of them all. He had 
reason to complain of slights and wrongs, not at the hands 
of Washington who valued and trusted him, but at the 
hands of the politicians. He seems to have despaired of 
the revolutionary cause and to have shrunk from the French 
alliance, suspecting as did others that the French had 
designs on Canada, and to have made up his mind to play 
Monk. He opened clandestine negotiations with Clinton, 
whose adjutant and envoy was the ill-starred Andre, a 
young man of culture and sensibility. By Arnold's invi- 1780. 
tation Andrd visited the American lines, and on his way 
back fell into the hands of the enemy while Arnold had 
just time to escape. Whether having been drawn into the 
American lines by their commander he was guilty of hav- 
ing acted as a spy must be decided by martial law, which 
has rules and a phraseology of its own. But it can hardly 
be said that he was tried. He was convicted and sentenced 
solely on his own statement, of which the incriminating 
part was taken, while to the exculpating part, his averment 
that he had been unwittingly drawn by Arnold within the 
lines, no weight was allowed, though the evidence for both 
was the same. Greene, who presided over the court, had 
written before the trial : " I wrote you a letter by the post 



108 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

yesterday respecting General Arnold. Since writing that 
letter General Washington is arrived in camp and the 
British Adjutant General and Joshua Smith, both of whom 
are kept under strong guard. They are to be tried this 
day and doubtless will be hung to-morrow." It seems vain 
to cite the foreign officers who sat in the court of inquiry 
as impartial judges ; they were enemies of England and of 
2d Englishmen. Andr^ was hanged with great parade, his 
1790. pi'ayer that he might be shot having been refused by 
Washington, and as his enemies denied him a soldier's 
death his country did right in giving him more than a 
soldier's tomb. It seems certainly to have been hinted to 
Sir Henry Clinton that Andre might be exchanged for 
I Arnold. If the hint came from any important quarter a 
dark shade is cast upon the execution of Andre. 
1779. After Burgoyne's disaster and the proof which the 
Northern States had on that occasion given of their spirit, 
the royal commanders turned to the South, which they 
might hope to detach and save for the king, even if the 
North was lost. In the South there was reason to believe 
that Koyalism was stronger than in the North. The people 
were not Puritan, they were more monarchical than those 
of New England, more simple-minded, and being not 
traders or manufacturers but husbandmen, they had been 
13th less galled by the laws of trade. Clinton took Charleston, 
]78o' the chief southern port and city, with a large garrison 
and great stores. Cornwallis, left in command while 
Clinton returned to New York, gained an easy and com- 
plete victory over very superior numbers at Camden in 
Kith South Carolina, the militia giving signal proof of the 
1783. truth of Washington's saying that they would not stand 
against regulars in the open field. He afterwards gained 



II. KEVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 109 

a victory less easy or complete over Greene, the best of Mar. 

1781 

the American generals save Washington, at Guildford. 
Taiieton, a local royalist, also did wonders with his light 
horsemen, though he soon found his match in the Ameri- 
can Marion. But Tarleton, with a detachment of Coni- 
wallis' force under his command, attacking in his over 
confidence with weary troops, was defeated at the Cowpens ; .Jan. 
the only battle, if an engagement on so small a scale can be 
called a battle, lost in open field by the king's troops during 
the war. The local loyalism, though fiery and too often 
cruel, proved not staunch, and the effect of the incursion 
was rather to let loose mutual massacre and plunder amongst 
the motley population of Dutch, Germans, Quakers, Irish 
Presbyterians, and Scotch Highlanders, than to bring the 
colonies back to their allegiance. A combined French 
and American attack on New York appearing imminent, 
Cornwallis, recalled by Clinton, fell back into Virginia 
and intrenched himself on a neck of land at Yorktown on 
the Chesapeake Bay, in a position which so long as his 
own fleet commanded the bay was a stronghold, but when 
the command of the sea was lost became a trap. The 
command of the sea was lost by the arrival of a French 
fleet under De Grasse, with which there was no British 
fleet to cope. Washington uniting his army to that of 
Rochambeau, they moved together on Yorktown, while 
some misunderstanding, as it appears, between Cornwallis 
and Clinton retarded Clinton's aid. Cornwallis, in a 
desperate position and beleaguered by an army four times 
outnumbering his effective force, after turning his eyes 
for some days to the sea in the vain hope of discerning Oct. 

1781 

British sails, was compelled to capitulate and march out, 
as the painting in the hall of the Capitol depicts him, 



110 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

between the lines of French and American troops. Wash- 
ington had the modesty and generosity to keep off specta- 
tors. This was the end. It would not have been the end 
if America had been a foreign enemy and the heart of the 
British nation had been really in the struggle. It was not 
the end of the contest with France, Spain, and Holland. 
But of the contest with the colonies it was the end. The 
American farmers might go home, hang up their muskets 
and follow the plough as they had in "the old colony 
days," which probably not one in a hundred of them re- 
garded with abhorrence and to which most of them, we 
may be pretty sure, had been looking back with regret. 
No conflict in history has made more noise than the Revolu- 
tionary War. It set flowing on every fourth of July a 
copious stream of panegyrical rhetoric which has only just 
begun to subside. Everything connected with it has been 
the object of a fond exaggeration. Skirmishes have been 
magnified into battles and every leader has been exalted j 
into a hero. Yet the action and, with one grand exception, 
the actors were less than heroic, the ultimate conclusion 
was foregone, and the victory after all was due not to 
native valour but to foreign aid. 

Civil war as well as international war there will some- 
times be, but it ought always to be closed by amnesty. 
For amnest}'" Cromwell declared on the morrow of Worces- 
ter. Amnesty followed the second civil war in America. 
The first civil war was followed not by amnesty, but by an 
outpouring of the vengeance of the victors upon the fallen. 
Some royalists were put to death. Many others were 
despoiled of all they had and driven from their country. 
Several thousands left New York when it was evacuated 
by the king's troops. Those who remained underwent 



II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. Ill 

virulent persecution. Massachusetts banished by name 
three hundred and eight of her people, making death the 
penalty for a second return ; New Hamjjshire proscribed 
seventy-six ; Pennsylvania attainted nearly five hundred ; 
Delaware confiscated the property of forty-six ; North Car- 
olina of sixty-five and of four mercantile firms ; Georgia 
also passed an act of confiscation ; that of Maryland was 
still more sweeping. South Carolina divided the loyalists 
into four classes inflicting a different punishment upon 
each. Of fifty-nine persons attainted by New York three 
were married women, guilty probably of nothing but 
adhering to their husbands, and members of the council or 
law officers who were bound in personal honour to be 
faithful to the crown. Uj^on the evacuation of Charleston, 
as a British officer who was upon the spot stated, the loy- 
alists were imprisoned, whipped, tarred and feathered, 
dragged througli horse ponds, and carried about the town 
with " Tory " on their breasts. All of them were turned 
out of their houses and plundered, twentj^-four of them 
were hanged upon a gallows facing the quay in sight of 
the British fleet with the army and refugees on board. 
Such was the statement of a British officer who was upon 
the spot, ashore and an eye witness to the whole. Some 
of these men, such as Johnson the guerrilla leader and 
Butler the author of the attack on Wyoming, had been 
guilty of crimes for which they might justly have suffered 
under the common law, though they could not have suf- 
fered more justly than some ruffians on the other side. 
But the mass had been guilty of nothing but fidelity to 
a lost cause. Honour, Ave will say with Mr. Sabine, to 
those who protested ; to General Greene, who said that it 
would be "the excess of intolerance to persecute men for 



112 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

opinions which twenty years before had been the universal 
belief of every class of society " ; to Alexander Hamilton, 
who nobly stood up against the torrent of hatred as the 
advocate of its victims in New York ; to John Jay, who 
said that he " had no desire to conceal the opinion that to 
involve the Tories in indiscriminate punishment and ruin 
would be an instance of unnecessary rigour and unmanly 
revenge without a parallel except in the annals of religious 
rage in the time of bigotry and blindness." The loyalist 
exiles peopled Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Upper 
Canada with enemies of the new Republic, and if a power 
hostile to the Republic should ever be formed under 
European influence in the north of the continent, the 
Americans will owe it to their ancestors who refused 
amnesty to the vanquished in civil war. 
1783. By the treaty of peace, Great Britain not only recognized 
the independence of her colonies but gave them, what 
France was not very Avilling and Spain was very unwilling 
to give, unlimited extension to the westward over the 
territory which her arms had won from France. Canada, 
her bond of honour to the loyalists compelled her to 
retain. In the course of the negotiations the hollowness 
of the league of hatred between America and the European 
enemies of England appeared. France, as the American 
envoys thought, played America false, and the Americans 
were guilty towards France of what they admitted to be 
a breach of diplomatic courtesy while France called it by 
a harder name. " It is now substantially proved," says a 
recent American writer of eminence, " that the unmixed 
motive of the French cabinet in secretly encouraging the 
revolted colonies, before open war had broken out between 
France and England, had been only to weaken the power 



11. REVOLUTION, IN^DEPEKDEJS'CE, A^D L'MOA'. li;] 

and sap the permanent resources of the natural and appar- 
ently eternal eneni}^ of France." To seize the opportunity 
of crippling a powerful enemy was the avowed aim uf 
Vergennes in urging his king to go to war. The conduct 
of negotiations on the British part fell at first to the lot of 
Shelburne, the most liberal statesman of his day, who had 
ardently desired re-union and who now, with young Pitt 
by his side, sought to make the settlement with the colonies 
a treaty not of peace only but of reconciliation, dividing 
the imperial heiitage without destroying the moral unity 
of the race. Had Shelburne's policy prevailed, there would 
have been no war of 1812, there would have been no 
fisheries question, nor Behring Sea controversy. But 
Shelburne's government was overthrown by the factious 
ambition of Fox, with whom it is painful to say went 
Burke. A demand for compensation to the loyalists Con- 
gress, unable to deny its justice, put off with an ironical 
recommendation of compliance to the States, whose reso- 
lution it knew. England gave the loyalists more than 
three millions and a half sterling if we include the pen- 
sions and half pay, and new homes to those that chose 
them under her flag. The recognition of private debts 
was, thanks to the honesty and wisdom of John Adams, 
though not without great difficulty, obtained. 

The political separation of the colonies from the mother 
country, once more, was inevitable. Not even the most 
fervid imperialist can imagine the sixty -five millions of 
the United States remaining dependent on the thirty-five 
millions of the British Islands. No English statesman in 
the present day could think without shuddering of such a 
task as that of governing New England across the Atlantic. 
But by right-minded men the violence of the separation 



114 THE UNITED STATES. chat. 

must ever be deplored. The legist jvirt of tlio evil ^\a5 
the material havoc. Of this the lai-ger share fell as usual 
ujx>ii the country which wtvs the scene of war. England 
cAme out at la^t with her glory little tarnished. She had 
yielded not to America, but to America, France, Spain, and 
Holland combined. That tremendous coalition she had 
faced, the national spirit of her people which had not been 
tlioroughl}- awakened by the war ag-aiust her own colonists, 
rising to do battle with her foreign enemies : and her flag 
floated in it^s pride once more over the waters which were 
the scene of Rodney's victory, and on that unconquei-ed 
rock beneath wliich the Spaniard received his share of the 
profits of the league. While she w;is losing nominal 
empire in America, illustrious' adventurers had enlarged 
her real empire in Hindustan. Of all the consequences, 
the worst to Great Britain was that the olig-archy which 
ruled in Ireland was enabled, by taking advantage of her 
peril, for a time to cast off imperial control and to set up 
an independence which ended in the catastrophe of "98. 
The loss of her eoloniiil dependencies in it^self was clear 
gain, political, military, and commercial. Their trade, her 
share of it, and her profit from it, increased after their 
political emancipation. She was thus repaid what she 
had expended in the war. But she lost what was more 
valuable tlian glory, empire, or the profits of trade, the love 
of her colonists, and in place of it incurred tlieir intense 
and enduring, though unreasonable and unworthy, hatred. 
The colonists by their emancipation won commercial as 
well as fiscal freedom, and the still more precious freedom 
of development, political, social, and spiritual. They were 
fairly launched on the course -of their own destiny, which 
diverged widely from that of a monarchical and aristocratic 



ir. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND L'NION. 115 

1 oalni of the old world. But their liberty was baptized in 
civil blood, it was cradled in confiscation and massacre, its 
natal hour was the hour of exile for thousands of worthy 
citizens whose conservatism, though its ascendancy was 
not desirable, might as all true liberals will allow have 
usefully leavened the republican mass. A fallacious ideal 
of political character was set up. Patriotism was identified 
with rebellion, and the young republic received a revolu- 
tionary bias, of the opposite of which it stood in need. 
The sequel of the Boston Tea Party was the firing on Fort 
Sumter. 

Another consequence was the severance of Canada from 
the United States and a schism of the English-speaking 
race on the North American continent, opening the way, 
which unity would have closed, for the introduction of 
international enmities, of a balance of power, and of war. 
Statesmanship is now labouring against an accumulation 
of difficulties to undo the evil work done a century ago by 
denial of amnesty to the vanquished in civil strife. 

France in gratifying her hatred of England became 
bankrupt. Bankruptcy brought revolution, and the French 1789. 
revolution brought a deluge of woe, not only on France 
but on mankind. Up to that time the spirit of philosophy, 
philanthropy, and reform had by a peaceful movement 
been gaining possession of the governments of Europe. 
An era of improvement without convulsions seemed to be 
dawning. Young Pitt when he came into power saw noth- 1784. 
ing before him but peace and reduction of taxes. He 
looked forward to the total abolition of customs and to 
free trade, within sight of which the world has never since 
come. The American revolution by the financial ruin 
which it l^rought on France, by the revolutionary spirit 



116 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

which it infused into her, and by the violence for which it 
gave the signal, changed the scene, and Jacobinism, terror- 
ism, reactionary despotism, militarism, incarnations of the 
same malignant spirit, were let loose upon a world which 
they still distract and ravage. Misfortune pursued even 
the persons of those most concerned. The French king, 
whose weakness had consented to the war, and his queen, 

1793. whose folly had encouraged it, mounted the scaffold before 
the unpitying eyes if not amid the plaudits of the Ameri- 
can democracy which they had saved. D'Estaing having 
helped the queen to her doom, himself followed her, and 
Lafayette, after dancing for a moment on the top of the 
revolutionary wave, Avas overturned by genuine revolution- 
ists and flung out into disappointment and impotence. 

The good effects of the American revolt on British 
politics have it would seem been overrated. Whatever 
Chatham or any one else might say in his oratoric mood, 
there was little danger of the enslavement of Britain by 
means of a colonial stamp act or a colonial duty on tea. 
For that the Whigs and the people were too strong. On 
the other hand, a few years after Yorktown the king was 
able to set his foot on the neck of the Whig party by his 

1784. personal nomination of Pitt, and Toryism reigned thence- 
forth with hardly a break for forty years. England's 
colonial system also remained unchanged till with all the 
other parts of British government it felt the tide of return- 
ing Liberalism, which carried the Reform Bill. In truth, 
defeat in anything like a British cause was not likely to 
entail on the monarch a forfeiture of British hearts, and it 
was in a British cause that Rodney and Eliot at all events 
had conquered, while it was before French arms that Corn- 
wallis had fallen. 



II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 117 

What is called the American revolution was not truly a 
revolution but a separation. The colonists had taken up 
arms as they averred for chartered right, not for constitu- 
tional change. Nevertheless a gradual revolution ensued. 
The colonists had broken away from monarchy, they had 
learned to hate it and everything connected with it, they 
had been steeped in republican sentiment ; they had ex- 
pelled the monarchical, aristocratic, and hierarchical ele- 
ments and tendencies of the community. So strong had 
the feeling already become against anything hereditary or 
aristocratic, that the foundation of " The Cincinnati," an 
hereditary brotherhood of the officers who had fought in 
the war and their descendants, brought on a storm. From 
the British Parliament supreme power had passed to the 
legislatures of the several States. The States had reor- 
ganized themselves in the cases where it was necessary on 
a republican footing. Their constitutions after some ex- 
perimental oscillations assumed in process of time nearly 
the same form, each having as its executive, in the place 
of a royal governor or the vice-regent of its proprietary, an 
elective governor with a veto not absolute like that of the 
crown but suspensive, and a legislature consisting of two 
houses, a Senate which succeeded to the old Council, and 
an Assembly; both houses being elective, but the con- 
ditions of election to the Senate and the tenure of seats in 
it being such as to render it rather a conservative and re- 
vising body, while the Assembly was the direct expression 
of the popular will. This was in fact the old English 
model as it was understood to be, with the omission of the 
hereditary element. In almost all the states there had 
been up to that time a property qualification of some sort 
for the franchise. Gradually in the succeeding years these 



118 THE ryiTED STATES. chap. 

qualifications were abolished and manhood snffrage pre- 
Tailed- This, apart from deliberate poUey, the bidding of 
politicians against each other for popular support was sure 
to bring to pass. The elective principle was unhappHv ex- 
tended in time by most of the states to the judiciaiy. 
Greoroia setting the bad example which Massachusetts was 
wise enongh always to refuse to follow. The common law 
of England remained and still remains the basis of Ameri- 
can law. Eren the technicalities of its pleading system 
hare in some American states jartly surviTed their aboli- 
tion in the old country- But the legal supports of terri- 
torial aristocracy, primogeniture and entail, disappeared. 
With them departed the last relias of the manorial system : 
tliat of freehold farms — territorial democ-racy, as it has 
been c^led — ererywhere preT^iled- and Xew York ceased 
to pay homage, ultimately she ceased to pay quit-rents, to 
ber patoKHis. The Church establishments, alike that of 
CoDgr^aticMB^sm in ^lassachusetts and that of Angli- 
caniCTfi in the Soadiem and Middle States, passed away 
and gare p3aoe to religioiK equality, though a state profes- 
aon of Christianity with some legal safeguards for religion 
lingered on and lingers still, especially with regard to 
ibe obserranee of Sunday. Consrregatioiial ^tablishment 
in Ihe Xorth somewhat surrived An2rlir:an establishment 
in the South- because the first was popular, the second 
aristoeiatic. Churches which had been established took up 
iheiT pc^tioo as free churches- a proems in which the 
Church of England marked - - '- ------ - ' -ir-al charac- 
ter, for the English episocj^ -r no one a« 
bishop who had not taken the <^th to the crown, and for 
the consecration of an Ameriean hmhop it wa« necessary to 
hare recourse to the free An^iean episcopate of Scotland. 



n. RETOLUnOX, rN"DEPE>~DE:SCE. A>"D U^IOX. 119 

Apart from specific change, coiistinitioiial. legal, or 
ecclesiastical, there was a general chancy of ideas as to 
the origin, foundation, and authority of sjovernment. The 
court which had been paid to the king was henceforth to 
be paid to the sovereign people. To the soveTeicjn people 
all loyalty was henceforth due. Against the sovereign 
people only could treason be committed. That treason 
could be committed against the soverei^ people even 
more easily than against a king, was the opinion of Samuel 
Adams, who in opposing the extension of merey to some 
convicted insurgents laid it down that in monarchies the 
crime of treason or rebellion might admit of being par- 
doned or lightly punished, but the man who dared to rebel 
against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death. 

The five years which followed the final separation of the 
colonies from the mother country have been justly called 
the critical period of American history. Imperial unity 
had departed, national unity had not taken its place. The 
bond of mutual danger, weak enough even while the 
danger lasted, had departed with the return of peace. 
Congress, originally the organ of a \A"ar league and invested 
only with war or diplomatic powers, was jK>litically a 
shadow. Its army had been brv^ken up, its currency had 
lost all value, to raise money it was driven to such expedi- 
ents as drawing on its foreign ministers and selling the 
drafts for cash. It was unable to keep its worxl to the 
scarivd veterans who had fought for it. Its financier, the 
banker^statesman Rolvrt Morris, struggled with its em- 
barrassments nobly but in A-iun. It had not the means of 
pivteeting tlie lives or piv>perty of its citizens on the high 
seas. A handful of rautineei-s turned it out of doi^rs. 
Keduced to ignominious impotence at home it could not 



120 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

eomniiuid respect abroad, nor could England or any foreign 
nation be justly upbraided by Americans with slighting a 
governnieut which Americans themselves almost spurned. 
Valid treaties could not be made with a government which 
had no means of punishing their infraction. Seeing the 
confusion, some of the army officers would have made 
Washington king, but he more decisively and sincerely 
than Csesar or Cromwell put away the crown. The States 
were scattered along nine hundred miles of coast, broken 
by many impediments to travel. They had little inter- 
communication. Their interests and feelings were still 
strongly local in spite of their partnership and the com- 
radeship of their soldiers during the war. Among the 
public men who had taken a leading part in the struggle 
for independence and among the Continental veterans 
there might be a community of sentiment, but on the 
whole the centrifugal forces prevailed and were gaining 
strensfth. State selfishness manifested itself with violence, 
especially in the case of New York. It was becoming 
fatal even to commercial unity. States fell foul of each 
other. There were disputes about territory, and in a con- 
test between Pennsylvania and Connecticut for the posses- 
1784. sion of Wyoming that hapless settlement was a second 
time devastated, and with cruelty only less than that of 
the Indians and Tories. Such a dissolution and such a 
collapse of public spirit are not the usual sequel of a 
struggle for a great cause, the tendency of which on the 
contrary is to elevate, brace, and unite. Grievances and 
discontent were rife. Commerce, almost ruined by the 
maritime war, was now weltering in the slough of a 
debased paper currency into which individual States were 
wa.ding deeper still. There was a heavy burden of private 



II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 121 

as well as of public debt. Men were being dragged to 
debtors' prisons. The community Avas vexed by litigation 
and the enforcement of odious claims. Gambling specula- 
tion flourished, as it always does when the currency is 
deranged, and the people were incensed by the sight of its 
shameful gains. The spirit of repudiation was abroad. 
Scarcity appeared and food riots with it. At length law- 
loving Massachusetts became the scene of a dangerous 
rebellion of the indebted and suffering class under the 
leadership of Daniel Shays, formerly a captain in the 1787. 
Continental army, who in common probably with many of 
his comrades had been reduced to want by the failure of 
the public faith. 

Shays' rebellion gave a salutary shock. Anarchy was 
evidently at hand. To avert it a convention met to 
give the country a government by framing a constitution. 1787. 
The president of the convention was Washington, who, 
the war ended, had sought retirement and domestic happi- 
ness at Mount Vernon sincerely but in vain. Personal 
confidence in him it was in great measure that made the 
convention possible and enabled it to do its work. Once 
more and not for the last time he saved the state. When 
the servile dread of popular opinion which is the bane of 
popular government began to show itself, he rose from his 
chair and said, " It is too probable that no plan we propose 
will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to 
be sustained. If to please the people we offer what we 
ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our 
work ? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and hon- 
est can repair ; the event is in the hand of God." " These 
words," says an eminent writer, " ought to be blazoned in 
letters of gold and posted on the wall of every American 



122 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

assembly that shall meet to nominate a candidate or 
declare a policy or pass a law, so long as the weakness of 
human nature shall endure." If it could only be shown 
how the politician is to act in this spirit, while to him the 
pleasure of the changeful multitude is life and its displeas- 
ure is death ! The leading minds of the convention were 
Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Rufus King, Robert Morris, 
Gouverneur Morris, Pinckney, Oliver ElI-;woith, Klbridge 
Gerry, James Wilson, and Roger Sherman — sagacious 
and experienced men of business, like the men of whom 
the American Senate is now composed, and far unlike the 
men to whose lot it unhappily fell to frame a constitution 
for revolutionary France. Jefferson, the author of the 
Declaration of Independence, whose opinions were French 
and revolutionary and whose influence had he been present 
would have been great, was happily absent as ambassador 
at Paris. The tendency of the American statesmen was 
conservative, their mission being to avert dissolution. That 
their work proclaims their wisdom, the world declares. 
They founded, if not the first national republic, the first 
which was destined to endure. The republics of antiquity 
were cities, and Rome when she became more than a city 
ceased to be a republic. In the United Netherlands the 
Stadtholderate was a veiled monarchy. The Common- 
wealth of England lived but for an hour, though it left 
what may prove a valuable legacy in the Instrument of 
Government. The union of the Swiss Cantons was at 
this time not national but federal, in the strict sense of 
the term. It has since become national by approximation 
to the American model. 

The problem which the framers of the American consti- 
tution had to solve was that of reconciling a strong na- 



I 






II. DEVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 12.3 

tional government, which was the aim of most of them, 
with the claims and susceptibilities of separate and in their 
own eyes sovereign states. The solution of that problem 
was a nation with a federal structure. The federal j^arts 
of the constitution are the recognition of the right of each 
state to self-government in regard to all ordinary matters 
of legislation or administration ; the equal representation 
of the states great and small in the Senate, which is placed 
beyond the power of amendment ; and the election of the 
president through state colleges, the verdict of which may 
not coincide with that of the majority of votes in the 
whole Union ; the last provision being however of little 
practical importance. It is also declared in the interest of 
state right that any power not expressly given to the fed- 
eral government is withheld and remains in the states or in 
the people. In the group of states with which the framers 
had to deal there were differences of size or importance 
which rendered federation on an equal footing a work of 
difficulty. Yet there was no towering predominance to 
excite the permanent jealousy of the rest, as there would 
be if England were federally united with Scotland, Wales, 
and Ireland. Whether the constitution was a compact, as 
parties to which the states retained their independent exist- 
ence, or an incorporating union in which the independent 
existence of the states was merged, was a question left by 
the framers to settle itself and which was ultimately decided 
by the sword. What is certain is that Congress was not 
made, like the British Parliament, a sovereign power. 
The sovereignty remained either in the states or in the 
united people. 

The national part of the constitution was not struck out 
at a heat as misdirected eulogy avers, but was framed like 



124 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

the constitutions of the several states on the English 
model, as the English model was in law and was still 
imagined in fact ta be even by the English themselves, 
with an executive head and a legislature divided into two 
co-ordinate branches. The elective president was the 
republican substitute for the hereditary king, and was 
invested with the executive powers, political, diplomatic, 
and military, which the king was still supposed to possess. 
The military command however was to be direct only in 
the case of the standing army ; of the militia, the command- 
ers were to be the governors of the states, to whom the 
president's requisition was to be addressed. The Senate 
was the republican and elective House of Lords, and was 
like it restrained from originating money bills. The 
House of Representatives was the House of Commons, the 
direct expression of the popular will, as well as in this 
case, the organ of the nation, while the Senate was the organ 
of the states. The Senators were to be elected by the state 
legislatures for six years, the members of the House of 
Representatives were to be elected by the people for only 
two years ; and the Senate was expected, both from the 
mode of its election and from the length of its term, to be 
like the upper house of the British Parliament a conserva- 
tive and revising body. The qualification for the national 
suffrage was to be the same as that required for electors 
of the most numerous branch of the legislature in each 
state, an enactment of which, leaders and parties bidding 
against each other for popular support, manhood suffrage 
was the certain offspring. The presidency, after much 
debate and many changes of mind, was made tenable for 
four years with the power of re-election, the exercise of 
which was presently limited by fixed custom to a double 



II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 125 

term. The election was not intended to be popular; it 
was vested in colleges of electors, sage citizens it was sup- 
posed they would be, one college for each state. But the 
election of these colleges for the special purpose inevitably 
became a mandate, and a presidential election practically 
by manhood suffrage is now the most extensive display of 
popular sovereignty in the world. The president was 
invested with a suspensive veto in place of the veto nomi- 
nally absolute of the British king, while a share was given 
to the Senate in the executive power by making its con- 
sent necessary to official appointments and to treaties. 
These were deviations from the revered but impracticable 
principle of Montesquieu, who had laid it down that the 
complete separation of the executive, legislative, and judi- 
cial powers from each other was the only sure pledge of 
freedom. 

On the other hand, whether in deference to Montesquieu 
or to the political purism which had given birth to place 
Bills in the old country, ministers of state were excluded 
from the legislature. Thus a turn was given to the parli- 
amentary system in America different from that which had 
been taken by the parliamentary system in England, though 
almost without the knowledge of Englishmen themselves. 
Cabinet government was precluded. Instead of a ministry 
responsible to the legislature, and dependent for existence 
on its vote, America has a ministry independent of the 
legislature and irremovable during its term of four years. 
Instead of the control exercised over legislation by the 
ministers sitting in Parliament, America has controlling 
committees nominated in the House of Representatives by 
the Speaker, who is thus not merely the chairman but the 
party leader of the House. In the Senate there can hardly 



126 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

be said to be any initiative or control, except that of party 
organization or individual influence. 

Of government by part}-, in which their settlement was 
destined to result, the framers of the constitution appear 
not to have thought, thougli they had an example of it 
before them in the British Parliament. That organized 
party would be the dominant force acting under the forms 
of the institutions which they framed did not, so far as we 
can see, occur to their minds. In this most momentous 
respect their foresight failed. 

The states were prohibited from laying import or transit 
duties on each other's goods. Internal free trade was thus 
secured to the whole of the continent occupied by the 
United States. This was practically the greatest of all the 
measui'es of free trade in commercial historj^. 

For the amendment of the constitution two processes 
were assigned, the initiative being given either to two-thirds 
of both Houses of Congress or to the legislatures of two- 
thirds of the states. Both processes are so difficult, espe- 
cially when the Union is divided into parties, as to carry 
conservatism almost to the length of immobility. There 
was no amendment during a period of sixty years. 

The interpretation and legal guardianship of the consti- 
tution were vested in a Supreme Court, the judges being 
appointed by the President with consent of the Senate. 

In the constitution, or in additions soon after made to it 
by way of amendment, are provisions which taken together 
constitute a republican Bill of Rights. A republican con- 
stitution is guaranteed to each of the states, no titles of 
nobility can be granted, no religion can be established, no 
religious tests for office can be imposed ; speech and the 
press are to be forever free, liberty of public meeting and 



II. KE VOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 127 

of petition are secured, trial by jury is to be every man's 
right ; acts of attainder, ex post facto laws, or laws impair- 
ing the faith of contracts are not to be passed ; no private 
property is to be taken by the state without compensation ; 
that military usurpation may be rendered impossible, all 
freemen are permitted to carry arms. 

The adoption of a federal senate with a national house 
of representatives was a compromise for the sake of union 
between the claims of the states and those of the nation. 
The clauses of the constitution respecting slavery were a 
compromise for the sake of union between the freedom 
which prevailed in the North and the slavery which pre- 
vailed in the South. In the northern and central states 
since the revolution emancipation had been making rapid 
progress. Vermont led the way in legislative prohibition. 
Massachusetts judicially applied to the negro the principle 
of equal rights embodied in the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, much as in England slavery had been judicially 
interdicted in the case of Somerset. Elsewhere liberal 
sentiment had practically prevailed. In the southern 
states there were politicians who saw the danger of slav- 
ery and philanthropists who condemned its iniquity. But 
the economical conditions which fostered it were too 
strong and were destined soon to be fatally reinforced. 
In the apportionment of representation the South was 
allowed by the Fathers of the constitution to count three- 
fifths of its slaves. A fugitive slave law was introduced 
and the Union is pledged to lend its forces for the suppres- 
sion of slave insurrection. The existence of the slave 
trade was secured for twenty years. Soon after the adop- 
tion of the constitution, Kentucky was admitted as a slave 
state and two fugitive slaves were arrested at Boston. 



i 



128 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

The names " slavery," " slave," and " slave-trade " are 
avoided ; those of " persons held to service or labour," 
'' importation and migration " are used instead. But the 
veil of language betrays consciousness without hiding the 
guilt. Compromises of expediency may well be wise, com- 
promises of principle always fail. AVe know now of what 
upas tree the germ was planted here. This was the first 
of three great compromises with slavery for the sake of 
union. 

The convention sat with closed doors, as every assembly 
must if it means really to deliberate, not to talk to the 
gallery and the reporters. In this case it was most neces- 
sary that the debate should be perfectly free, and that the 
work should come complete before the people. But the 
substance of the discussion has been preserved in authentic 
notes and nothing in political archives is more important. 
In overcoming the opposition, constitutional or arising 
from the local fears and jealousies of different states, there 
was abundant work for personal authority, statesmanship, 
address, and eloquence both of the tongue and pen. 
Among the opponents of union were Samuel Adams 
and Patrick Henry, the latter of whom, if the evidence 
of his opponents is to be believed, appealed without 
scruple to all motives. Pamphleteering abounded on both 
sides and the controversy gave birth to one memorable 
work, " The Federalist," of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. 
Unluckily " The Federalist" is mainly taken up with allay- 
ing the fears, proved by the event to be groundless, of 
those who fancied that the power of government would be 
too great, while with the real dangers, democratic passion, 
demagogism, and factions, it omits to deal. 

Provision was made by the constitution for the govern- 



II. REVOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, AND UNION. 129 

inent. Provision for expansion had been made by a 
resolution of the old Continental Congress which de- 
clared that the demesne or territorial lands "should be 
disposed of for the common benefit of the United States, 
and be settled and formed into distinct republican states, 
which shall become members of the federal union, and 
have the same rights of sovereignty, freedom, and indepen- 
dence as the other states." Virginia and other states had 
conceded to the confederacy the vast tracts to which they 
laid claim between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, 
and for the settlement and political organization of these 
tracts an ordinance had been made in 1787 second in 
importance only to the constitution. The nomination of 
a governor by the president and the election of a rudi- 
mentary legislature formed the provisional process by 
which the territory was to be prepared for admission as a 
state to the Union by an Act of Congress when its popu- 
lation should have become sufficient, and provided Con- 
gress approved its constitution. By a memorable article 
of the ordinance slavery was prohibited north of the Ohio. 
Thus marshalled by law and order, the host of settlement 
and civilization set forth on its westward march. Human- 
ity had advanced since the migrations of the Huns and 
Tartars. A system of dealing with the public lands 
which should treat them, in their primary aspect, not as a 
national estate of which a market was to be made, but as a 
field for settlement, and open them on the easiest terms to 
the settler, was needed to complete the policy. In time it 
came. 



CHAPTER 111. 



REPUBLIC. 



1780 TTTASHINGTON became rresideiit by acclamation. At 
ITOT. tlie end of his term of four yeai^s he with unfeigned 

reluctance consented to re-election. For eight yeai-s he 
Mas in power far more of a king than the crownod King of 
Enghmd; he not only reigned, but governed. He even 
kept something like royal state, he rode in a coach-and- 
four, at the opening of Congress in a coach-and-six. He 
treated admission to his U^vees and parties as a matter of 
etiquette, unlike his democratic successors, who are com- 
pelled to receive all comers at all times and to allow tlie 
millions to take them by the hand. His birthday was 
kept like that of a king. His wife was called Lady 
"Washington, the article in the constitution against titles 
of nobility notwithstanding. On state occasions he wore 
court dress. In all this, however, he was not indulging 
personal pride, but doing what he thought was incumbent 
on the head of the nation, for he was always a sincere 
republican, though of the aristocratic type. His state, 
though modest and certainly covering no designs of ag- 
grandizement, did not fail to give umbrage to jealous 
democracy, which took arms at once against the proposals 
to confer on the President such a title as " Highness," or 
10 put his head on the coins. 

130 



ciiAr. HI. RioriiiUiK;. lai 

To tho character and authority of the head of tlie nation 
must hirufcly be ascribed tlio success of the constitution, 
vvliich ni lirsl bad litth; hohl upon the people. At the 
lirst session of (Congress eight weeks ehipsed after tlie 
appointed day before enough niend)ers arrived to form a 
(luoium. Before the end of Washington's term tlie con- 
stitution had lirmly taken root, tlie authority and dignity 
of Congress were assured, and it had di'awn to it the 
ability, the ambition, and the political life of the nation. 
From the outset there was a full measure of practical 
sagacity in both houses. The Senate being the upper 
chamber and tlic tenure of its members being six years, 
while that of those of the House of Representatives was 
only two, it presently drew the higher statesmanship to 
itself. It was always more conservative and at first sat 
with closed doors. 

Washington's wisdom was that of judgment rather than 
that of forecast. He seems to have had no inkling of the 
course whicli, under the elective system, affairs would 
really take. Party, the power of the future, his own 
breast being absolutely free from it, he regarded as a pass- 
ing malady in others, and thought he could subdue it by 
uniting in his cabinet the leaders of the opposite schools 
of politics, Hamilton and Jefferson. But from the irrecon- 
cilable enmity of these two men, and the ultimate retire- 
ment of Jefferson, he might have seen what would come 
whenever his own supremacy was withdrawn. Each was 
the head of a party in course of formation ; Hamilton 
of the Federalists, the party of strong government and 
English leaning ; Jefferson of the democratic republicans, 
the party of closely circumscribed government, and of 
sympathy with France. 



132 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, by general 
consent, ranks first in ability of American statesmen, at 
least amono^st those of the old school. It is to him that 
hostile critics of American statesmanship have special 
reference when they say that the transformation of Rome 
by Augustus has been reversed, and that what was at 
first an edifice of marble has been turned into an edi- 
fice of brick. He was not a native patriot, but had been 
transplanted to the colony of New York from a crown 
colony in the West Indies, the sentiments of which were 
essentially monarchical and aristocratic. At a New York 
dinner he replied to a democratic sentiment by striking 
his hand on the table and saying, " Your people. Sir, your 
people is a great beast." Though he meant beast no doubt 
in the Platonic sense the sentiment which he expressed 
was not worship of the people. Ambition, as he frankly 
admitted to himself, was his guiding star. At the open- 
ing of the revolution he seems to have chosen the path to 
which his star guided him, coolly and without fanaticism, 
while he showed his moderation as well as his generosity 
and courage by protecting a royalist against the fury of a 
revolutionary mob. Joining Washington's staff and be- 
coming military secretary, he disj^layed precocious ability 
as a negotiator in delicate affairs and as a writer of de- 
spatches, at the same time distinguishing himself in the 
field. As a witness of the military mal-administration of 
Congress and the consequent sufferings of the army, he 
must have had the need of a strong and capable govern- 
ment forcibly impressed upon his mind. The nobleness of 
his soul was shown in his sympathy with Andre, and more 
practically when the war was over by declaring for 
amnesty and gallantly stemming the tide of vindictive 



III. REPUBLIC. 133 

persecution in New York. When the time came for 
bringing order out of the political chaos which followed 
the revolution, his was the leading and informing spirit. 
He was the most zealous promoter of the constitutional 
union, and as the principal writer in " The Federalist," its 
foremost defender. Though New York was his state, not 
being a native of it he could rise above its narrow interests 
and be a citizen of the Union. To exalt the Union above 
the States and enlarge the authority of the central govern- 
ment was his steadfast aim. By his opponents he was 
accused of a design to introduce monarchy and aristocracy. 
He was a man of too much sense either to suppose this 
possible or to pursue a chimera. But though a loyal 
republican he was no democrat. He would have been 
more at home in the place of Turgot or Pitt than in the 
service of the multitude. His belief in the wisdom of the 
people was limited, and he detested mob rule. He had 
insight enough to discern, and frankness enough to avow 
his opinion, that something which was called corruption 
was almost inseparable from the working of parliamentary 
institutions. Becoming Secretary of the Treasury under 
Washington, he with wonderful ability got the finances, 
the state of which had seemed desperate, into order, 
averted bankruptcy and repudiation, induced Congress 
not only to meet the federal debt, but, what was much 
more difficult, to assume the war debts of the States, 
funded the entire debt and made provision for the pay- 
ment of the interest, restored the national credit, the 
soundness of the currency, and with them, commerce and 
prosperity. Stock-jobbing there could not fail to be in 
a great financial transition. " Scripo-phobia " raged for a 
season. But Hamilton did nothing to encourage it, and 



134 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

his own hands were clean. In Webster's words, for once 
florid, " he smote the rock of the national resources, he 
touched the dead corpse of the public credit which sprang 
upon its feet." "The fabled birth of Minerva from the 
brain of Jove was hardly more sudden or more perfect than 
that of the financial system of the United States from the 
conceptions of Alexander Hamilton." In doing all this 
he was called upon to display force of character and 
ascendancy over men not less than financial skill. Among 
his measures was the creation of a national bank, and in 
this, as in his whole policy, he had not only the immediate 
end but the strengthening of the government in view. 
His youthfulness at the time of his great success makes 
him almost a counterpart of Pitt. From the economical 
fallacies of his day he was not entirely free. His tariff 
was protectionist, though only to a moderate extent, and 
it practically affirmed, apparently without constitutional 
sanction, the power of Congress to impose taxes for the 
purpose of fostering particular trades as well as for that 
of raising a revenue. Otherwise his economical and finan- 
cial views were sound, and he owed their soundness 
mainly to his own genius. His powers of exposition were 
also of the highest order, though as a popular orator he 
did not attempt to shine. His purity was above suspicion; 
the attempts of his enemies to impeach it totally failed. 
Equally above suspicion was his patriotism, and if in the 
fierce excitement of political conflict he once or twice did 
what could not be defended, these were but spots on a 
character otherwise stainless. Though not a learned 
1804. lawyer he was a great constitutional jurist. He died 
l)efore his hour, murdered under the form of a duel. But 
it is not likely that had he lived longer he would ever 



III. REPUBLIC. 135 

have been head of the state. Great as was his ascendancy 
over the men of his own party, he was never popular. 
His memory never became dear to the multitude, and it 
was left to his own family at a late day to erect his statue. 
Jefferson, Washington's Secretary of State, was and 
still is a popular idol. This man's character is difficult to 
treat. There is something enigmatic about his portrait, 
which combines a body large and strong, fitted for horse- 
manship and athletic exercise, with a face somewhat fem- 
inine not to say feline. As governor of Virginia in the 
war he had shown lack of nerve if not of courage. Few 
will maintain that he was in an eminent degree truthful, 
straightforward, free from propensity to artifice and in- 
trigue. Few will contend that he would ever, like Hamil- 
ton, have braved unpopularity in defence of righteousness. 
His own A7ia remain to confute any admirer who claims 
for him freedom from malice or greatness of soul. He 
had unbounded faith in the people, and never doubted the 
success of the great American experiment in democracy ; 
there lay his strength. The social current of the age 
was with him ; he knew it and steadfastly guided his 
course on the assumption that, whatever influences might 
prevail beneath the lingering shadow of the old dis- 
pensation, democracy would in the end prove victorious, 
and bear its votaries on to success. Intently he listened 
for the voice of the popular will, and surely he caught its 
every whisper. His political philosophy seems to have 
been summed up in the belief that all evils having been 
the work of government, the less of government there 
was the better. This, it has been said, stood him in the 
place of religion. Anarchy itself was, or he could fancy 
that it was, preferable to strong government. Shays' 



136 THE UNITI-:D STATES. chap. 

rebellion in Massachusetts, which frightened the states 
into union, was by him regarded as a healthy exercise of 
freedom. " A little rebellion," he said on that occasion, 
"is a good thing and ought not to be too much discour- 
aged." It was a medicine necessary for the health of 
government. " God forbid," he cried, " that we should be 
twenty years without such a rebellion. . . . What signi- 
fied a few lives lost in a century or two. The tree of 
liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood 
of patriots and tyrants : it was its natural manure." He 
affected to believe that the Indians who had no govern- 
ment at all were happier than the people who lived under 
the European governments ; and of the three conditions, 
Indian anarchy, governments wherein every one had a just 
influence, and governments of force, it was not clear in his 
mind that the first condition was not the best. He did not 
think it ridiculous to say that were it left to him to decide 
whether they should have a government without news- 
papers or newspapers without a government he should not 
hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. He embraced and 
exhorted a disciple to propagate a theory which he shrank 
from propagating himself, that no generation had power 
to bind its successors ; and that as nineteen years were a 
generation, national repudiation and bankruptcy would 
be lawful after that period. These were his transports, 
which in the actual field of politics were controlled by 
his good sense. Jefferson, however, was not one of the 
people, but a being of a higher order stooping to iden- 
tify himself with the people who, as they were not yet 
conscious of their power, were captivated by his conde- 
scension. He was literary, philosophic, scientific. His 
love and command of philosophic abstractions appears in 



III. REPUBLIC. 137 

the most momentous and famous of his works, the Decla- 
ration of Independence. He planned the University of 
Virginia. He was in his day the cynosure of classical 
taste, and the father of that domestic architecture which 
presented the front of a Doric temple with family and 
culinary developments in the rear. His agriculture was 
scientific and experimental. In religion he was a free- 
thinker, and in liis own State an ardent promotor of reli- 
gious liberty. To him Anglican establishment in Virginia 
owed its doom. He detested the clergy and b}^ the 
clergy was detested. He hated England with intense bit- 
terness, was French to the core, and went all lengths in 
his sympathy with the French revolution. He could 
palliate the September massacre, rejoice that his friends at 
home were taking the name of Jacobins, and say that 
rather than the revolution should have failed he would 
have seen half the earth devastated ; that were there but 
an Adam and an Eve left in every country things would 
be better than they were. The clergy, when he taunted 
them with fanaticism, might have retorted that fanaticism 
was not confined to religion. Had he been a fellow citi- 
zen of Robespierre he would have been in some danger 
with his enthusiasm, his sentimentalism, and his acquies- 
cence in philanthropic blood-shed, of doing as Robespierre 
and other sentimental philanthropists did. The danger 
would have been enhanced by his extreme suspiciousness ; 
for he lived in a perpetual tremor, spying " monocracy," 
the political demon of his fancy, not only in Hamilton and 
all Hamilton's associates, but in Washington himself, at 
whom he glanced in his political correspondence, though 
he could not directly assail the character of the hero. As 
to England, she was capable in his imagination of bribing 



138 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

the Algerines to prey upon American commerce. Another 
of his peculiarities was his tendency, derived perhaps from 
the. mixed influences of a planting state, Rome, Sparta, and 
Rousseau, to dislike commerce and manufactures, and re- 
gard agriculture as the foster-mother of political and social 
virtue. Of the abolition of slavery he was a philosophic 
advocate, but never emancipated his own slaves. As a 
party leader he ^vas a perfect artist in his way. But his 
way was not that of the modern politician, whose first 
requisite he lacked. He was no platform orator ; he was 
no orator at all. He seems to have wanted both flow of 
language and nerve. He did not even enter the lists as a 
public writer. He managed his party through its leading 
men, and its leading men by personal correspondence, 
which he carried on with boundless industr}^ and consum- 
mate tact, alwaj's masking his restless and far-reaching am- 
bition beneath professions of devotion to private happiness 
and distaste for public life. He, however, used the press 
as his organ, and it is not easy to extricate him from the 
charge of having countenanced Freneau, a reptile journal- 
ist, in attacking the administration of which he was a 
member. His principal lieutenant was Madison, a man of 
cultivated mind, a political philosopher, one of the writers 
of " The Federalist," master of an Addisonian style, free 
from the extravagances of his leader while destitute of Jef- 
ferson's winning enthusiasm and genius for party manage- 
ment, well-meaning and incorruptible, though, as he was 
destined to show on a fatal occasion, morally weak. Of all 
American statesmen, hitherto, Jefferson has left the deepest 
impression on the character of his people. Their political 
ideas and hopes, their notions about their own destiny and 
the part which they are to play in the drama of humanity 



III. REPUBLIC. 139 

have been his. That Jefferson, not Hamilton, rightly 
divined the tendency of society and the secret of the 
future is so far the verdict of events. It remains to be 
seen whether the belief in individual liberty, self-reliance, 
and self-help which formed his gospel is to give way as the 
creed of the party progress, to belief in socialistic regula- 
tion and the paternal action of the state. 

All that the patriotic appeals of a chief, himself serenely 
superior to personal rivalries, could do to hold these two 
men together in the public service was done by Washing- 
ton, but in vain. After explosions and explanations in 
which Jefferson failed to produce anything except vague 
suspicion artfully expressed against his rival, the Secretary 
of State retired from office to Monticello, his hermitage, as 
his fancy styles it, to farm, as he said in all his letters, and 
at the same time to spin a vast web of party connection by 
a correspondence full of personal and political allurement, 
while he listened for the footfall of advancing democracy 
whose advent was to be the signal for his own rise to 
power. 

Under Washington's reign and through Hamilton's 
measures of financial and administrative reform, the Re- 
public became responsible and respectable. America 
entered the community of nations. She showed it by bold 
dealing with the corsairs of Algiers to whom she sent men 
of war instead of tribute, laying thereby the foundation of 
her national navy. It was hard to expect that she should 
be treated as a nation before she had become one, by Eng- 
land or any other power. " Our country," wrote John 
Adams, " is grown, or at least has been, dishonest. She 
has broken her faith with the nations and with her own 
citizens, and parties are all about for continuing this dis- 



140 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

honourable course. She must become strictly honest and 
punctual before all the world, before she can recover the 
confidence of anybody abroad." The distinguishing quali- 
ties of the colonies and their government previously to the 
union have been described as " faction, jealousy, and discord, 
infirmity of purpose, feebleness in action, unblushing dis- 
honesty in finance, black ingratitude against the army, 
and a rapid acquisition of an ever-growing contempt on 
the part of the rest of mankind." These are the words of 
a recent American writer of mark. The conduct of the 
English government during the years of American anarchy 
has been harshly judged even by English writers. In the 
light of what followed it is seen that heartily to take the 
initiative in the restoration of amity would have been 
England's wisest as well as her most magnanimous course. 
But apart from the soreness of defeat upon which people 
who are themselves at all sensitive ought not to be severe, 
there was not a little to repel amicable advances. The 
Americans refused to pay their debts to their English 
creditors ; some of the States seemed determined to repu- 
diate. The treatment of the loyalists, which disgusted 
Hamilton, Greene, and Jay, could not fail to disgust still 
more those in whose cause the loyalists suffered, and the 
complaints of a number of these men who had migrated to 
England were ringing in English ears. Till the American 
government had power to enforce treaties, negotiation was 
bootless and the interchange of ambassadors would have 
been a farce. In the question of indemnity to loyalists 
the confederacy had avowed that it had no means of en- 
forcinof the concurrence of the States. The north-western 
posts were held by England practically as a security for the 
payment of the debts. That the British Government or 



III. REPUBLIC. 141 

anybody by its authority was intriguing with the Indians 
against the Americans is an assertion of which there ap- 
pears to be no proof. Simcoe, the Governor of Upper 
Canada, having fallen under suspicion, though an excellent 
officer, was recalled. Of the narrow mind of George III 
it would have been vain to expect the magnanimity of 
greatness. He had suffered enough to be regarded with 
some indulgence. But he never was discourteous, and he 
made a manifest effort to be cordial. When John Adams, June, 
the first American ambassador, addressed him, the King, ^^^^* 
as Adams tells us, was much affected, and answered with 
tremor. " Sir," he said, " the circumstances of this audi- 
ence are so extraordinary, the language you have now 
held is so extremely proper, and the feelings you have dis- 
covered so justly adapted to the occasion, that I must say 
that I not only receive with pleasure the assurance of the 
friendly dispositions of the United States, but that I am 
very glad the choice has fallen upon you to be their min- 
ister. I wish you, sir, to believe and that it may be under- 
stood in America, that I have done nothing in the late 
contest but what I thought myself indispensably bound to 
do by the duty which I owe to my people. I will be very 
frank with you. I was the last to consent to the separa- 
tion ; but the separation having been made, and having 
become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I 
would be the first to meet the friendship of the United 
States as an independent power. The moment I see such 
sentiments and language as yours prevail, and a disposition 
to give to this country the preference, that moment I shall 
say, let the circumstances of language, religion, and blood 
have their natural and full effect." The last sentence is not 
so good as the rest, but the King's emotion and his habitual 
want of command of language disarm strict criticism. 



142 THE UNITED STATES. chai-. 

We can hardly doubt that Pitt shared the desire of Shel- 
burne to restore family relations. On the other hand it 
seems not unlikely that Americans at the Court of St. 
James's sometimes put on a republican air. A rebuff ad- 
ministered by them to aristocracy and monarchy is re- 
counted by the biographer with a smile. There were even 
causes for mistrust. Gouverneur Morris takes offence at 
the coldness with which he is received by a British minister. 

1790. By his own avowal he had just been instigating the French 
government to form a hostile confederacy against Great 
Britain and make a war on her which she had done nothing 
to provoke. It is not unlikely that the British minister 
had an inkling of this ; if he had his coldness was excusa- 
ble. The British statesmen of that day, when we repine 
at what we think their folly in failing to clap their padlock 
on the American heart, are entitled to the benefit of later 
experience. It seems that no harmony is so difficult to 
restore as that between two kindred nations which have 
©nee broken the tie. 

Government showed its new force in grappling with a 
foe nearer home. In the procession at Philadelphia on the 
ratification of the constitution were seen a citizen and an 
Indian chief seated together in an open carriage and smok- 
ing the calumet to personify peace on the frontiers. It was 
easier to personify peace than to install it. Washington 
had to deal with a formidable Indian war in the northwest. 

1791. One of his generals, St. Clair, met with a defeat not less 
disastrous than that of Braddock, the disgrace of which is 
cast wholly on British officers and troops. But General 
Wayne restored the day, and by a great victory over the 
Indians practically closed the struggle with the tribes as a 
power, and the influence of that struggle on American his- 



III. REPUBLIC. 143 

tory. Assimilation, however, never took place. The dis- 
placement of Indian tribes by advancing civilization con- 
tinued, though mitigated by a system of reservations. The 
desultory conflict between the Indian and the frontiersman, 
with its savage features, steeping the frontier character in 
ferocity, continued in the far west, and is not extinct even 
at this day. 

Washington had also to deal with the local renewal of 
the anarchy created by the civil war and by the absence of 
a national government in the interval between the war and 
the union. A part of Hamilton's financial policy was an 
excise. Against this an insurrection broke out among the 1792. 
restive population of Western Pennsylvania. By Wash- 
ington's fii'mness and wisdom the revolt was put down 
and law was enforced without bloodshed. 

Washington's re-election, like his election, was unani- 1792 
mous. He might have wavered more between the call of 
public duty and his yearning for private happiness had he 
foreseen the storm that was to rage during his second term. 
The mine in France to which American revolt had set the 
match had now exploded and the French revolution had 
been launched on its mad career. At first all Americans 
hailed the dawn of French liberty. But when to the dawn 
of liberty a day of confusion, massacre, blasphemy, anar- 
chy, and public lunacy succeeded, the educated, wealthy, 
and religious classes for the most part recoiled. The law- 
loving Englishman awoke in them and the}' began to 
sympathize with England as the power of ordered liberty 
against the frenzy of the Jacobins. Yet the sympathy of 
the masses remained with France and seemed to be intensi- 
fied, instead of being diminished, by her extravagances and 
crimes. It rose to the pitch of delirium when France 



144 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

1793. declared war against England. A French envoy, Genet, 
was welcomed with transports of popular enthusiasm. He 
was young, ardent, imbued with a piratical diplomacy of 
the philanthropic Republic. He proceeded with Jacobin 
energy to treat the United States as a satrapy of revolu- 
tionary France, to use its territory as the base of a maritime 
war against England, to fit out in its ports privateers which, 
manned with American seamen, preyed upon British com- 
merce, and even to set up courts of admiralty for the con- 
demnation of his prizes. By the privateers in conjunction 
with two French frigates fifty British vessels were captured, 
some of them in American waters. He appealed to privi- 
leges which the United States had by treaty accorded to 
France, but which, even assuming that the regicide Republic 
was the heir of the monarchy, could not, any more than 
treaty arrangements of the ordinary kind, override inter- 
national obligations. In all his outrages. Genet was wildly 
aj)plauded by the Republican masses. When his piratical 

1793. frigate sailed into Philadelphia flaunting the English 
colours reversed with the French flag over them, the whole 
population of what was then the political capital of the 
Republic turned out to disjjlay its sympathy. The 4th of 
July, we are told, seemed more like a French than an 
American demonstration. Could Louis XVI have looked 
down in spirit upon the scene, he, who had saved the 
Americans from sure disaster, might have beheld a civic 
banquet given in honour of the regicide emissary and 
graced by the presence of the governor of an American 
State at which after singing " The Marseillaise " the head 
of a pig was handed round and stabbed by the knife of 
each of the guests in turn with appropriate maledictions. 
Those who blame the British statesmen of that day for 



I 



in. REPUBLIC. 145 

showing coldness towards the American Republic are bound 
to remember that England received from an American 
party, not on account of her misdeeds but on account of 
her monarchical character, demonstrations not of coldness, 
but of frenzied hatred. Washington, faithful to interna- 
tional duty, issued a proclamation of neutrality and enforced 1793. 
it with vigour, as he alone could have done. Jefferson, 
thoroughly sharing the popular feeling, no doubt winced 
under the necessity of doing his duty as Secretary of State ; 
yet he did it. His sagacity taught him that Genet's 
extravagance would be ruinous to his cause in the end. So 
it proved, when Genet, utterly losing his head, appealed 
from Washington's government to the people. His recall 
was then demanded and was granted the more readily as 
in the swift phantasmagoria of the revolution the ascen- 
dancy of his faction had passed away. Washington had 
also to restrain the sympathies of his own envoy at Paris, 
Monroe, who, losing the ambassador in the enthusiast, 
allowed himself to be publicly welcomed by the convention 
as the representative of a revolutionary republic having a 
common cause with Jacobin France, and to receive from 
the President that hug of fraternity in which confiding 
nations died. There can be no doubt that the crimes and 
orgies of the revolution were hateful to Washington, who 
was not only a political conservative, but believed, and in 
his farewell address declared, that religion was the indis- 
pensable basis of public morality. But he restrained his 
feelings and amidst the storm of party passion raging 
around him kept morally as well as legally the path of 
strict neutrality. The Jacobin press of America, including 
the reputed organ of his own Secretary of State, assailed 
him, especially when he had denounced the Jacobin clubs 



146 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

which had been founded in the United States on the French 
model. He was stung sometimes to the heart, but his 
resolution was not moved. 

Washington's authority was put to the severest test by 
his treaty with Great Britain. Relations with that power 
were extremely strained. On both sides some of the 
articles of the treaty made at the close of the American 
revolution remained unfulfilled, and in addition there were 
questions touching liberty of commerce, the exercise of 
belligerent rights by Great Britain against the traders 
of America as a neutral power, and the impressment of 

1794. British seamen found in American vessels. To effect a 
settlement and avertwar Washington determined to send 
an envoy to England and his choice fell upon the Chief 
Justice, John Jay, of whom Webster said, that the ermine 
— the English emblem still clinging to American imagina- 
tion — touched nothing less pure than itself when it fell 
upon Jay. The envoy was no doubt English in mental 
frame and political sentiment, but there is not the slightest 
reason for believing that he failed in his mission to do his 
best for his country. His treaty, as it restored amity with 
England, was sure to displease the French party. Wash- 

1796. ington kept it secret for some time. When it was dis- 
closed a furious storm arose ; Jay was accused of having 
sold his country. It was doubtful whether the treaty 
would pass the Senate. The scale was turned in its favour 
by a speech which ranks among the masterpieces of Ameri- 
can oratory from Fisher Ames, who, supposing himself to 
be in the last stage of disease, addressed the assembly with 
the pathetic force of a dying man. Ames said that there 
was little use in combating the particular objections to 
the treaty; that whatever the terms might be no agree- 



III. REPUBLIC. 147 

ment with Great Britain would satisfy those who urged 
against the ambassador that he was not ardent enough 
in his hatred of her, who dechired that no treaty ought 
to be made with an enemy of France, that England was a 
den of sea-robbers, that her people deserved to be extir- 
pated, and that it would be well for mankind if she were 
sunk in the sea. He no doubt represented truly enough 
the feelings and language of the French party. The in- 
fluence of the father of his country was tried to the utmost 
in the ratification of Jay's treaty, but it prevailed, and 
peace, if not friendship, was for the time secured. 

Nothing would induce Washington to accept a third 
term. He was growing old and deaf. He longed for 
peace and his farm. The attacks of the Aurora^ the 
fiercely democratic and anti-British journal of Duane, an 
Irish refugee, and other organs of the republican press, 
despicable as they were in themselves, being taken as the 
utterances of a large party sometimes drew from him 
passionate outbursts of grief, especially when the purity of 
his motives was impugned, and he, the most disinterested 
of men, was charged with designs against the liberty of his 
country. He retired, a genuine Cincinnatus, to Mount 
Vernon. At his departure he issued a farewell address, 1796. 
which ranks amongst the sacred documents of American 
history. In this he solemnly exhorted his fellow citizens 
to unity and love of their country, warning them against 
geographical divisions, against the excesses of party, and, 
most emphatically, against entanglements with European 
politics, and the indulgence of inveterate antipathies to 
particular nations and passionate attachments to others, 
which, as he said, made a nation a slave to its antipathies 
and attachments, and in both cases equally led it astray 



148 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

from the path of its duties and its interests. Excellent 
advice, loudly applauded and little observed ! The para- 
graph dwelling on the value of religion as one of the 
pillars of national prosperity and cautioning against the 
supposition that without it morality could be maintained, 
can hardly have failed to be construed as a thrust at the 
Jacobins and at the free-thinking Jefferson. Addresses of 
profuse gratitude and veneration were voted by Congress. 
A few murmurs of dissent were heard. One notably from 
Andrew Jackson, the Congressman from Tennessee, of 
gaunt frame and grim aspect, with elf locks hanging over 
his face and his hair tied behind in an eel skin, and so 
hot in temper that when he tried to speak his utterance 
was choked by passion. Nor could the Aurora and its 
republican consorts in the press be silent. In the Aurora 
appeared an article ascribed to a young pupil and favour- 
ite of Jefferson, who hailed the day of Washington's de- 
parture as the day of salvation, rejoiced that he who had 
been the source of all the misfortunes of the country 
was at length brought down to the level of his fellow 
citizens, that he could no longer by his name give cur- 
rency to political iniquity or afford support to suspicious 
projects, and that the designs which he had formed 
against the very existence of public liberty were now at 
an end. " If ever a nation," said the Aurora editorially, 
" was debauched by a man, the American nation has been 
deceived by Washington. Let his conduct then be an 
example to future ages. Let it serve to be a warning 
that no man may be an idol. Let the history of the 
federal government instruct mankind that the mask of 
patriotism may be worn to conceal the foulest designs 
against the liberty of the people." Rather let these words 



III. RKrUBLIC. 149 

serve as a warning against the blind frenzy of parti- 
sanship and the inherent evils of party government. 
Upon Washington's name were also poured the vials 
of hatred by Thomas Paine, on whose behalf, when he 
had become a French citizen, sat in the Convention, and 
fallen into the fangs of the terrorists, Washington de- 
clined to interpose. In truth Washington did belong in 
political and social sentiment to a departing age and to 
a different sphere. His spirit, as well as the man himself, 
was passing off the scene. What would be his feelings if 
he could now see a presidential election ? 

Washington's renown is always present in the name of 
the national capital, the site of which after its temporary 
sojourn at Philadelphia was, in accordance with his wish, 
finally fixed on the Potomac, where it might seem to link 
the North and South together. Hamilton had 'induced 
Jefferson to consent to the assumption of the State debts 
by the Union on condition that the national capital should 
be placed on the Potomac. This is the first case of log- 
rolling in the history of Congress. It seems to have been 
a complex case, the South consenting against its financial 
interest to the assumption of the State debts on the tacit 
understanding that Congress should turn a deaf ear to 
petitions against slavery. Washington thought that the 
city on the Potomac would become an important mart. 
It never did ; nor did it, till very recent times, become 
anything but a political and administrative capital in the 
wilderness, with but little of general society to temper the 
roughness of the legislators and mitigate the violence of 
party conflict. The presence of slavery was not conducive 
either to good manners or to virtue. No wonder if politics 
at Washington were somewhat rude, if affrays and du('I> 



150 THE UNITED STATES. 






were not uncommon, if the dullness of senatorial boarding* 
houses was too often relieved by drinking or gambling, '_ 
and their lack of domestic happiness by connections to 
which slavery everywhere opens the door. The error of 
placing the seat of the legislature away from the social 
centres has been repeated by almost all the States and by 
the Canadian confederation. 

Parties were by this time distinctly formed. Their ma- 
chinery had been set on foot though not brought to modern 
perfection. The weakness of the elective system, the in- 
ability of electors unknown to each other to concur in a 
choice, had been revealed, and the party ticket had taken 
the place of a really popular election. Federal parties ex- 
tended, as they ever have, to State politics, the party in 
each State being a sort of donkey-engine to the great 
federal machine. By Washington's retirement the con- 
trolling hand which suspended their conflict had been with- 
drawn. Of the Federalist party Hamilton was the soul 
but not the head, its Achilles but not its Agamemnon. 
Between John Adams, who had been Vice-President under 
Washington, as the Federalist, and Jefferson, as the Re- 
publican candidate, the election for the Presidency lay. 
1797. John Adams was elected. The voting betrayed the politi- 
cal division between North and South which Washinffton 
might deplore but could not blot out, since its line was 
traced by the hand of nature. There is nothing in a rational 
republic to forbid the existence of great political houses, 
and the family of Adams is the nearest approach to such a 
house which the American republic has seen. John Adams 
was a high Federalist and an admirer of the British con- 
stitution, on the purified principles of which he desired 
that American institutions should repose. But he was 



III. REPUBLIC. 151 

one of the sires of the revolution and, as an American, 
thoroughly loyal to the republic. Moreover, as envoy to 
St. James's he had come in contact with British society in 
an unpropitious hour, and being personally sensitive was 
far from friendly to Great Britain. By a recent American 
historian he is described in familiar language as " a burly, 
round-faced, bald-headed, irascible man with a tough fibre, 
who was little understood by the people and to whom Con- 
gressional debates had been a sealed book." In integrity 
he was an ancient Roman. He had more force than play 
of character, and though his experience was wide, for he 
had been ambassador as well as statesman, more knowledge 
of books than of men. He was somewhat dogmatic, some- 
what pedantic, and from his childhood too self-conscious 
and too laboriously self-trained, as his methodical diary 
shows. He had soon to deal, like his predecessor, with the 
overbearing violence of revolutionary France, now flushed 
with victory, governed by a Directory composed of the 
unscrupulous and rapacious men who are thrown to the 
top by revolution, and having for its foreign minister 
Talleyrand, imbued, after a brief sojourn in the United 
States, with a low notion of American power. Under 
colour of belligerent rights the French preyed on Ameri- 
can commerce in both hemispheres, two of their cruisers 
being commanded by Barney, an American, while as the 
price of forbearance and an amicable treaty they insisted 
in effect that the United States should take part with 
them as a vassal ally against Great Britain in the war. 
Adams sent three envoys to Paris. Talleyrand, through <^ct. 
his reptile agents, gave them to understand that the 
American Republic, if it would escape the displeasure of 
the Directory and obtain a treaty, must, like other com- 



Kv2 TlIK UNITK.D STArKS. oiiAr. 

monwealtlis Avhioli France had taken to her bosom, pay 
her tribute and, in addition, a h\rge sum as a bribe to the 
Diivotore and liimself. His sagacit}" for once had failed 
him. The publication of the papere called the "X. Y. Z. 
Corivspondence" because Tallevrand's agents Avere denoted 
by those ciphei-s, kindled in America a tierce flame of re- 
sentment, and for a moment hatred of England was lost in 
indignation at the insolent tyranny of France. Federalists 
were exultant. Republicans were downcast. Jeffei-son 
quaked and watched the storm with close-reefed sails. 
Popular feeling swelled high. French emblems disap- 
peai-ed. The black cockade of the Americim revolution 
replaced the tri-colour. " Hail Columbia " was composed 
to oust the " Marseillaise." - Millions for defence, but not 
a cent for tribute," was the cry. Tallep-and was burnt in 
effigy, and President Adams found himself the object of 
an enthusiasm which pei-sonally he could never have 
excited. Preparations for war were made by land and 
sea. Washington was called upon to take once more the 
command of the army and consented in words which 
showed liis deep sense of French outrage. War had in 
fact commenced by sea, and a French frigate had been 
captured by an American, when the President, who had 
taken the stronsfest orround of national dignitv, to the sur- 
prise and dismay of his party, appointed a minister pleni- 
potentiary to Fi-ance. By this time the battle of the Xile 
and the turn of fortune in Italy had tempered the pride of 
the Directorr and a treaty was made. It cost Adams the 
attachment of the more vehement members of his party, 
but whether he was perfectly right or not in his treatment 
of his political friends, it cannot be doubted that he was 
rieht in avoidinsr war. 



III. KEPLBLIC. 153 

Oil this occasion Adams did not consult his cabinet, a 
name given to the great heads of departments, the Secre- 
tary of State, or Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Secreta- 
ries of the Treasury, War, the Navy, and the Interior, 
the Post Master General, and the Attorney General, whom 
the President usually takes into his counsel, though their 
offices strictly speaking are merely departmental and they 
exercise no collective function, like that exercised by the 
British Cabinet, of initiating and controlling legislation. 

The Federalists still had the upper hand, but tliey threw 
away their advantage by using it to excess. They passed 
two acts called the Alien and Sedition Acts, menacing 1798. 
to liberty. The United States were full of political 
refugees from Europe, most of them revolutionists, some 
of them agitators by profession, who had got the political 
press largely into their hands. Against these was pointed 
the Alien Act giving the government power of expulsion. 
The Sedition Act, even in the form in which it passed and 
which was milder than the original Bill, did not well 
observe the line between lawful criticism or constitutional 
resistance and sedition. A violent revulsion of public 
feeling ensued. Jefferson welcomed the rising gale. He 
was indeed carried out of his usual prudence and reserve. 
He drew up a manifesto for the use of his party in Ken- 
tucky designating the Union as a compact among States, 
claiming for the States severally the right of resisting any 
breach of the compact, and pronouncing that for a legis- 
lative encroachment on the part of the federal government 
the remedy of a State was nullification. This doctrine 
took no effect at the time, but it did not die. With the 
Alien and Sedition Acts was passed a Naturalization Act, 1798. 
increasing the term of necessary residence from five to 



154 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

fourteen years. This measure betrayed the alarm of 
native Americans caused by the influx of a motley tide 
of immigrants, including a number of Irishmen, most of 
whom were exiles through discontent and infected with 
revolutionary fever. The Act was repealed a few years 
afterwards and the old term of five years was restored in 
1802. In those days anything like a closing of the door of 
the universal asylum seemed impolitic as well as inhospi- 
table, whatever national interest may prescribe now. 

These political struggles, over which no baton of impar- 
tial command was waved any more, enhanced the intensity 
and bitterness of party. Right-minded men deplored the 
effect on social relations. The party press grew in volume, 
the number of political journals mounting from forty to a 
hundred, in power since each party journal had the minds 
of its readers to itself, and at the same time in slanderous 
virulence. Callender, a vagabond whose pen Jefferson 
had stooped to employ, and who afterwards turned against 
him and libelled him, was a type of the class. Attacks 
were made on the personal characters of statesmen, and 
Hamilton, assailed with a baseless charge of corruption, 
was compelled in his defence to confess that he had been 
guilty of an adulterous amour. Congress saw its halls 
profaned by a brutal affray between two of its members. 
The State politics of New York and in a less degree those 
of Pennsylvania, full of cabal and corruption from the 
beginning, mingled with the current of federal politics 
and deepened the darkness of its tide. 

In the choice of candidates at the next Presidential 
election there was on the side of the Federalists a good 
deal of intrigue, scope for which at that time was given 
by the mode of election, each elector voting for two men 



III. REPUBLIC. 165 

as President or Vice-President, without saying which of 
the two he preferred for the Presidency, so that the ulti- 
mate choice was left to the House of Representatives. 
John Adams, the natural candidate of the Federalists, 
received an ugly thrust from Hamilton, whom he had 
incensed by his conduct in the affair with France. 
Hamilton himself soon after fell in a quarrel arising out julj 
of New York politics by the pistol of Aaron Burr, a local ■^^^^' 
Catiline whose unscrupulous ambition he had crossed, 
falling a victim to a false code of honour which survived 
when other relics of feudalism had passed away. His 
work, or as much of it as was practicable, was done. To 
keep the Republic out of the hands of the democracy and 
in the hands of the chosen few was impossible, but Hamil- 
ton had succeeded in making it national, and in giving it 
a strong central government. In this his policy received 
the powerful and timely aid of Marshall, the great Chief 
Justice of the United States, who by a series of judgments 
on constitutional questions upheld and enlarged the power 
of the federal government. The clause of the constitution 
authorizing Congress to make all laws which should be 
necessary and proper for carrying into execution its 
enumerated powers afforded scope for a liberal interpre- 
tation of which the Chief Justice took full advantage. 
His decision in favour of the creation of a federal bank 
was a notable instance. It is allowed that he might with 
equal reason have decided the other way. 

The result was that the seed which Jefferson had for 
years been assiduously sowing bore its fruit. He became 1801. 
President and with power to give his policy full effect. In 
him the Republican party completely triumphed, while the 
Federalist party sank to rise again no more in that form or 



156 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

under that name. Adams, stung to the heart by the elec- 
tion of Jefferson, refused to witness the hateful spectacle 
of his successor's inauguration. He spent his last hours in 
filling up vacancies to place patronage out of Jeffereon's 
reach ; then he departed, the old order in his pereon giving 
place with a frown and a shudder to the new. Adams 
did not hate monarch}-, he thought that for England it 
was good. In the eyes of Jefferson monarchy was the 
incarnate spirit of evil and to rid mankind of it by 
example was the mission of the American Republic. 

Every vestige of the half monarchical state wliich 
Washington had retained was now banished from the 
President's mansion and life. No more coaches-and-six, 
no more court dress, no more levies. Although Jefferson 
did not, as legend says, ride to his inauguration and tie 
his horse to the fence, he was inaugurated with as little 
ceremon}- as possible. He received an ambassador in 
slippers down at the heel, and in the arrangement of his 
dinner parties was so defiant of the rules of etiquette as to 
breed trouble in the diplomatic circle. Yet with all his 
outward simplicity the Virginian magnate and man of 
letters, though he might be a Republican, could not in 
himself be a true embodiment of democracy. He was the 
friend of the people, but not one of them. From him to 
the rough warrior of Tennessee, the hard-cider drinking 
pioneer of Ohio, and the rail-splitter of Illinois, there was 
still a long road to be travelled. Nor had Jefferson snij- 
thing in common with Jacobins who guillotined Lavoisier 
saying that the Republic had no need of chemists; for 
among the cherished objects of his government was the 
encouragement of science. 

The desired day had come when the philosopher was to 



in. REPUBLIC. 157 

govern. The words of the address which Jefferson, unlike 
the demagogic sons of thunder in the present day, read in 
a very low voice, are the expression by its great master and 
archetype of the republican idea which has hitherto reigned 
supreme in the mind of the American people. These words 
are monumental, " Equal and exact justice to all men, of 
whatever state or persuasion, religious or political ; peace, 
commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling 
alliances with none ; the support of the State governments 
in all their rights, as the most competent administrations 
for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against 
anti-republican tendencies, the preservation of the general 
government in its whole constitutional vigour, as the 
sheet-anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad ; a 
jealous care of the right of election by the People ; a 
mild and safe correction of abuses which are lopped by the 
sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unpro- 
vided ; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the 
majority, the vital principle of republics, from which 
there is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and 
immediate parent of despotism ; a well-disciplined militia, 
our best reliance in peace and for the first movements 
in war, till regulars may relieve them ; the supremacy of 
the civil over the military authority; economy in the 
public expense, that labour may be lightly burdened ; the 
honest payment of our debts, and sacred preservation of 
the public faith ; encouragement of agriculture, and of 
commerce as its handmaid, the diffusion of information, 
and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason ; 
freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of 
person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial 
by jurors impartially selected ; — these principles form the 



158 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

bright constellation whicli has gone before us and guided 
our steps through an age of revolution and reformation." 

Jefferson's wand was the pen. Yet he is strangely apt 
to fall into mixed metaphors and even into platitudes. This 
address has not escaped criticism. A constellation goes 
before the people and guides their steps. In the sequel 
the constellation becomes a creed, a text, a touchstone, and 
should the people wander from the " touchstone," they 
are conjured to " retrace their steps and regain the road." 
In the genius of a man who made so vast an impression on 
such a nation we must believe, yet it is sometimes an exer- 
cise of faith to believe in the genius of Jefferson for any- 
thing but party management and personal fascination. 

Politicians out of power are apt to be opposed to strong 
government ; in power, they feel that a reasonably strong 
government is necessary to the execution of beneficent 
desififus. There are few more illustrious cases of incon- 
sistency than that of Jefferson, the austere champion of 
strict construction, when he nobly stretched or rather 
broke the constitution to enlarge his country's heritage by 
1803. the purchase of Louisiana. It was a principal aim of 
Bonaparte's policy to give France a colonial empire ; he 
had wrested from the weakness of Spain the retrocession 
of Louisiana, but after the brief and hollow peace of Amiens 
war again impending with the power which remained mis- 
tress of the seas, as he saw that his transatlantic prize 
must infallibly be lost, he resolved to put it beyond the 
grasp of Great Britain and replenish his military chest at 
the same time by selling Louisiana to the United States ; 
privately promising himself, we can hardly doubt, to 
enforce another retrocession when he was left master of 
the world. The constitution clearly gave the government 



I 



III. REPUBLIC. 15'J 

no power of acquiring foreign territory, and had Washing- 
ton or Adams been President, Jefferson would have de- 
nounced the assumption of such power as usurpation and 
as evidence of monarchical designs. Being himself Presi- 
dent, he over-rode the law, looking for indemnity to a 
national authority, the existence of which it would have 
been hard for him to reconcile with the doctrine of the 
compact of the States promulgated by him in the Kentucky 
manifesto. Thus a vast and fruitful territory with the 
mouth of the Mississippi was added to the domain of the 
United States. A population alien in race, language, 
character, and religion, was at the same time incorporated. 
But the digestive power of the American Republic proved 
suiBcient for political assimilation, and of French Louisiana 
there presently remained only traces prized by the lover of 
the social picturesque. A large section of the new world 
was thus liberated from the control of the old world and 
annexed to the realm of the American experiment. Un- 
happily there was also a great extension of the realm of 
slavery. 

The example of Bonaparte in its turn fired American 1805-7. 
fancy. Aaron Burr, the assassin of Hamilton, a true scion 
of New York politics as they then were, a showy and rest- 
less adventurer with revolutionary morals and a gift of 
misleading youth, and by grace of factious cabal Vice- 
President of the United States, formed a design of sever- 
ing Louisiana from the Republic and carving out for him- 
self a Napoleonic empire in central America. But his 
plot, after creating some noise and confusion, ended in a 
farcical catastrophe. 

Jefferson's first term was benign and prosperous. It 1801-4. 
was an era of financial success, reduction of debt, public 



160 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

frugality, expansion of trade and manufactures, sound pro- 
gress, general prosperity and contentment, a felicity which 
it owed to the firm government, unlike Jefferson's ideal, 
by which it had been preceded. The accession of Louisi- 
ana made it even glorious. It could disappoint only those 
whom Jefferson's jeremiads over the encroachments and 
corruptions of monocracy under the first two Presidents, 
had led to expect a new heaven and a new earth. On his 
advent to power the President had proclaimed that there 
was to be no more party ; all were Republicans, all were 
Federalists. The pledge implied in these loving words he 
qualified by removing some Federalist office holders and 
putting Republicans in their places, and he has been 
branded as the author of the spoils system. But his 
removals were not wholesale nor very numerous, and he 
did not cease to pay homage to the better principle ; he 
had an excuse in the natural claims of his friends, whom 
he found up to that time totally excluded from the public 
service, and a less respectable excuse in the importunities 
of partisans, for politics had now become a trade and office 
seekers began to swarm. His apology, however, raised a 
laugh. "If a due participation of office," he said, "is a 
matter of right, how are the vacancies to be obtained ? 
Those by death are few, by resignation none. Can any 
other method than that of removal be proposed ? " 

Jefferson was disposed, as some other popular leaders 
have been, to show jealousy of the judiciary, as a power 
independent of the people and its chiefs. Under his 
administration the Circuit Court Act, extending the 
action of the supreme judiciary and the number of judges 
1802. appointed for life was summarily repealed. On the power 
of the Supreme Court, then filled with judges appointed 



III. REPUBLIC. 161 

by the opposite party, he could not fail to look with a 
jealous eye. The impeachment of Justice Chase for par- 1803. 
tisanship on the bench had, no doubt, his sympathy, though 
he was too cautious to show his hand. The collapse of 
the impeachment left the Supreme Court more indepen- 
dent than ever. But in the Union generally, from the ten- 
dency to make the judges elective and their tenure not 
during good behaviour but for a term of years, the depres- 
sion of the judiciary in the period succeeding this was the 
rule. 

In Jefferson's second term fate was unkind to him. The 1805-9. 
philanthropist was called upon to deal with a question of 
peace or war between his government and those of France 
and Great Britain. Europe had become the scene of a 
vast and mortal struggle between the Napoleonic empire 
and the independence of nations, in which at length the 
British navy remained the sole stay of independence. 
Napoleon's only law was his will. His will was that 
there should be no neutrals. It was declared in his Berlin 
and Milan decrees, and was carried into effect by the ruth- 
less confiscation of American ships and goods. Great 
Britain on her side exercised with a high hand against 
neutral trade belligerent rights which the policy of nations 
has since discarded. As the French Emperor treated her 
islands so she treated the French Empire as in a state of 
legal blockade, and intercepted American commerce with 
its members. The situation, regarded even from our point 
of view, was highly complicated, and allowance must be 
made for the difficulties of those who had to deal with it 
on either side. The Americans might claim the right of 
neutral trade. But in this case the right could not be 
exercised without practically taking part in the war, since 



162 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

Great Britain, the land being entirely in the power of the 
enemy, had nothijig left her but to press him by sea, 
which she could do only by cutting off his trade. To 
British ai^prehension the neutral trade was war in dis- 
guise. It was carrying supplies to a place besieged. John 
Randolph of Virginia, no Anglomaniac, painted the char- 
acter of the trade with eccentric frankness. Supposing 
the choice of a British statesman to lie between the two 
evils, it might have been hard to say which was worse, 
open war with the United States, or the aid which their 
neutral trade would lend to France. You may have a 
right to traffic on a battle-field; but you will have diffi- 
culty in exercising it, especially if the battle-field is one 
in which nations are fighting for their lives. By keep- 
ing off the scene of conflict while the conflict raged, at 
the same time closing her own ports against combatants, 
America might have avoided collision ; she could hardly 
avoid it in any other way. 

With Great Britain there was another cause of quarrel, 
the impressment of British seamen found on board Ameri- 
can vessels. Here Great Britain was clearly in the 
wrong. She ought to have kept her seamen by increas- 
ing their pay and putting an end to the grievances which 
1797. produced the mutiny of the Nore. In heartlessly neglect- 
ing to render the service just to the common sailor, and at 
the same time makino- a brutal use of iniDressment, aristo- 
cratic government showed its dark side. It is true that 
impressment was conscription in a coarse form, and that 
the extreme notion of indefeasible allegiance still pre- 
vailed. But the practice, however lawful, was intolerable, 
and its offensiveness was sure to be aggravated by the 
conduct of British commanders full of the naval pride of 



in. REPUBLIC. 163 

their nation and perhaps irritated by the loss of their 
crews ; for it is not denied that many British seamen were 
seduced from the service and that the American marine, 
both mercantile and national, was largely manned in this 
way. We hear of a British captain having his whole crew 
spirited away without redress, and of a dozen British ships 
detained at once by loss of hands. The attack of the Brit- 
ish Leopard on the American (^hesapeake for the purpose 1807. 
of enforcing impressment was a flagrant outrage, and 
though apology was made and satisfaction was tendered 
by the British government, this was not done in a way 
to pluck the thorn out of the American bosom. It was 
unfortunate that England's foreign minister was at this 
time the surpassingly brilliant but not so wise, too often 
sarcastic, and sometimes insolent Canning. Feeling was 
embittered by the disclosure of a pretended plot on the 
part of the British government to sow dissension among 1809 
the American States through Henry, a low adventurer, ^§12. 
with w4iom Sir James Craik, the Governor of Canada, had 
been betrayed into imprudent relations, and who to ground 
a claim on the government for money had been tampering 
with malcontents in Kew England. What might have 
been done by courteous explanations and friendly appeals 
to avert the quarrel was unhappily not done. 

Meantime the neutral trade in spite of all obstructions 
and aggressions was veiy gainful, commerce adjusted itself 
to the risks, British cruisers protected American merchant- 
men against French and Spanish privateers. The Ameri- 
can merchants though they grumbled were willing to sub- 
mit ; not from them came the demand for war. 

" Our passion," said Jefferson, " is peace." He not only- 
recoiled as a philanthropist from bloodshed, but as a 



k 



104 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

politician he with reason dreaded military propensities 
and sabre sway. Such preparations for war as he could 
be induced to make were scrupulously defensive, and his 
fleet of gun-boats for the protection of the coast to be 
launched when the invader should appear excited a smile. 
Alone among all statesmen he tried to make war without 
bloodshed by means of an embargo on trade. American 
vessels were forbidden to leave port, foreign vessels were 
obliged to sail in ballast, and coasting vessels were pro- 
hibited from landing their cargo at any but American 
ports. Total denial of trade would, Jefferson thought, 
bring the belligerents, especially commercial England, to 
reason. By his great majority in Congress and his personal 
ascendancy he was enabled to carry this extraordinary 
measure and to enforce observance Avith a high hand and 
in language towards recalcitrants almost autocratic. An 
extraordinary measure it was and more easily defensible 
perhaps as an exercise of the war powers of the central 
government than as an exercise of the power given it by 
the constitution to regulate commerce, since total prohibi- 
tion, whatever the courts of law might say, could hardly be 
called regulation. On the part of Jefferson such a stretch 
of authority was startling; but he had left his anarchical 
theories on the steps of power, and had begun to boast of 
the strength of republican government. Commerce ceased. 
The ships lay idle at the wharves, and the seafaring pop- 
ulation lost its employment. The people suffered greatly 
by the withdrawal of the profitable though hazardous trade. 
The measure of their loss was given by the crowd of ves- 
sels which, when the embargo was lifted, put to sea. New 
England was to some extent indemnified by the develop- 
ment of her manufactures under the stringent protection 



III. REPUBLIC. 165 

afforded by the embargo. But on Virginia the effect was 
ruinous. Yet the respect of the people for the central 
authority was on the whole to a wonderful extent dis- 
played by their submission to the law. At this the spirit 
of Alexander Hamilton might have rejoiced. But Jef- 
ferson's government became the object of hatred and 
his vast popularity waned. England remained obdurate ; 
her situation was too desperate, her passions too highly 
inflamed for concession ; her strong aristocratic government 
was not easily to be turned from its purpose by the suffer- 
ings of trade or industry, while her shipping interest gained 
by relief from American competition. After resorting 
to measures of enforcement which on the part of a mono- 
crat he would have deemed flagrant tyranny, Jefferson 
was at last compelled to give up the embargo. Weari- 
ness and despondency overcame him. He let fall the 
reins of government before the term of his Presidency 
had expired, and he went into philosophic retirement at 
Monticello whence he returned no more. It is not the 
highest of his titles to fame in the eyes of his countrymen, 
but it may be not the lowest in the court of humanity, 
that he sacrificed his popularity in the attempt to find a 
bloodless substitute for war. His memory recovered from 
the shock and his reign over American opinion endured. 

Jefferson's successor was his shield-bearer, Madison, an- 1809. 
other of the Virginians whom wealth and leisure enabled 
to devote themselves to politics and to supply the young 
Republic with statesmen. He had been at first a Federal- 
ist and a fellow worker of Hamilton and Jay, but he had 
been afterwards attracted to Jefferson and had perhaps 
recognized in Republican principles the passport to power. 
By American writers he is invested with the highest 



166 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

mental gifts. Yet the impression which he makes on the 
ordinary reader is rather that of a cultivated and some- 
what prim mediocrity, though combined with a clear 
understanding, a scientific knowledge of politics, states- 
manlike training, and a surefooted ambition. At his 
right hand was Gallatin, a Swiss, a man whose standing 
was, owing to his foreign origin, below his ability, once 
revolutionary enough to bear an equivocal part in the 
Whiskey Insurrection, now grown more moderate and the 
great financier of the Republic. 

The event of Madison's Presidency is the war with 
1812 England. Few things are more repulsive or less profitable v 
jg24 than the study of the diplomatic embroilment in which 
the government of the United States was for years in- 
volved with those of England and France and which issued 
in a disastrous war. It is scarcely disputed by American I 
historians that the injuries received by American com- | 
merce at the hands of France were fully as great as those 
received at the hands of England. Napoleon had confis- 
cated American shipping and goods to an immense amount 
and coolly reckoned on the fruits of his violence as reve- 
nue. He seized a hundred and fifty ships in one year alone. 5- 
His Rambouillet decree was a barefaced proclamation of '' 
rapine to which effect was at once given by a sweeping 
confiscation of American vessels. Not only was his will 
his sole law, but he pretended submission to no other, 
whereas England at all events recognized international 
law, and held herself ready to atone for a breach of it. ^ 
But England was hated, France was not, and as an Amer- 
ican historian says, insults and injuries which, coming 
from Great Britain, would have set the whole country on 
fire, were submitted to with patience and even with the 



1 



in. REPUBLIC. 167 

pleasure with which a lover sometimes allows himself to 
be trampled on and plundered by an imperious and profli- 
gate mistress. Napoleon, it is true, did his best by false- 
hood and subterfuge to lead the American government to 
believe that he had withdrawn his decrees and that the 
British Orders in Council alone stood in the way of the 
recognition of neutral rights. But the American govern- 
ment was, to say the least, not unwilling to be deceived. 

A new influence, making for war, had come upon the 
scene of American politics. Settlement having now 
crossed the whole line of the AUeghanies, the West, fast 
becoming the great West, was added, and the union from 
being an Atlantic was becoming a continental confedera- 
tion. In Kentucky, the population drawn mainly from 
the slave States, was a picturesque but formidable mixture 
of the slave owner and the pioneer. The character of the 
Kentuckian was that of the hunter and the frontiersman 
with an imported strain of the slave owner, and he was 
always engaged in murderous war with Indians. His food 
was salt pork without vegetables ; whiskey he drank from 
morning till night. That he should be quarrelsome natu- 
rally followed. His amusements were horse-racing, cock- 
fighting, betting, and gambling, to the last of which he 
vv^as much given. He was always fighting, and in fighting 
he kicked, tore, bit, and gouged. In all his proceedings 
he showed a lawless vigour Avhich might prove the wild 
stock of civilized virtue. In the financial field he pres- 
ently distinguished himself by wild-cat banking, by the 
delirium of paper money, and consequent repudiation. 
Removed from the sea, he and the western people gener- 
ally had not, like New England, a commerce to be ruined 
by war, and of tlie English tradition and sentiment which 
still lingered at Boston he was utterly devoid. 



1G8 THE UNITED STATES. ciiAr. 

As were the people, so were the leaders of their choice, 
and of these the foremost was Henry Clay, a highly 
refined Kentuckian, yet a Kentuckian, as his taste for 
gambling, among other characteristics, showed. Clay put 
himself at the head of a set of young politicians who were 
bent on forcing the government into war. Calhoun, from 
South Carolina, the future champion of the slave power, 
was of the same set. But Clay was the most fiery, as well 
as the most fascinating. Not only did he want a war with 
England, but he looked forward to a series of wars to be 
carried on till one of the nations should be crushed, and 
the war of 1812 was among the achievements which he 
wished to be inscribed on his tomb. The President did not 
want war, but he wanted re-election, and he was made to 
feel that to be re-elected he must declare war. The fact 
is recorded without disguise. We have come down from 
Washington to Madison. When Napoleon, to turn the scale 
against England, feigned a withdrawal of his decrees, 
Madison affected to believe him ; it seems not certain that 
he did. 

England had given no special provocation at this junc- 
ture. On the contrary she was showing a disposition to 
make concessions. In fact the Orders in Council which 
stood first among the ostensible causes of quarrel had been 
withdrawn when war was declared. Clay then said that 
war must be waged against impressment, though he after- 
wards, as a commissioner treating for peace, was content to 
let that issue drop, and he was so far from being inflexible 
as to the principle concerned that, as Secretary of State 
at an after day, he offered Great Britain to surrender 
deserters from her military and naval service and from 
her mercantile marine, if she would surrender fugitive 



III. REPUBLIC. 1G9 

slaves who had taken refuge under her flag. For what 
cause he cared little ; war he would have. The fingers of 
the Kentuckian were twined in the locks of hated England 
and would not let go because the special ground of quarrel 
happened to be withdrawn. England was sorely pressed 
in the struggle with Napoleon. Of her allies none were 
left but the Spanish people and Russia, which Napoleon was 
preparing to invade. The opportunity for striking her was 
tempting, and Canada seemed an easy prey. The prospect 
of sharing Napoleon's victories would also have its attrac- 
tion, nor is there anything in the violence of a brilliant 
tyranny uncongenial to the violence of such democracy as 
that of young Clay. These probably were the real motives 
of the war which was made by Kentucky and the slave 
owners, and against which New England protested from the 
outset, not on commercial grounds alone, though on her 
commerce the heaviest blows were sure to fall, but because 
it would bring the Republic into unnatural alliance with 
the universal tyrant against the independence of nations 
and the rights of man. On the independence of nations and 
the rights of man Kentucky and the slave owners probably 
set little store. But had Napoleon won, the turn of 
America would have come. Nothing seems more certain 
than that he would have stretched his arm across the At- 
lantic, reduced the United States to vassalage, and enforced 
the retrocession of Louisiana. Of all things, what he hated 
most was a republic. That the conquest was practicable, 
the events of the war with England proved. It was 
unlucky that Erskine, the young British envoy at Wash- 
ington, in his eagerness to preserve peace, promised conces- 
sions which exceeded his instructions and was disowned 
by the evil genius of Canning in a manner which inflamed 



170 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

the quarrel. The war was not national ; it was made by 
the war-hawks, as Clay and his party were called. In the 
House of Representatives, the great organ of popular sen- 
timent, tlie declaration received a majority of only thirty 
votes, far less than the normal majority of the Democratic 
party, fifteen Republicans voting in the minority, and 
it passed the Senate with difficulty and only by the close 
vote of nineteen to thirteen, six Republicans voting against 
w^ar. The division was geographical, the Nortli being in a 
majority of two to one against the war. At Baltimore the 
mob seconded the party of violence by riot and massacre. 

The war of 1812 while it rekindled the fires of unnatural 
hatred, and renewed the schism of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
was to both combatants barren of profit and honour. Only 
the " war-hawk " politicians who did not shed their own blood 
gained in political advancement, and perhaps by the exer- 
cise of war patronage. Clay and Calhoun had confidently 
promised the Americans the conquest of Canada. The 
militia of Kentucky, Clay said, would of itself suffice for the 
achievement. Instead of this, the forces the Republic put 
forth in the invasion were repelled by a small body of 
British troops aided, not as appears at the outset zealously, 
by the local militia, and Michigan was lost. As the war 
went on tlie Americans learned discipline, were better 
led, and were more successful, but Clay's boast remained 
unfulfilled. The French Canadians were kept true to 
Great Britain by the same influences as before, and helped 
to gain more than one brilliant victory in her cause. At sea 
the iVmericans had better fortune. The British, confident 
in their naval prowess, not considering that the Americans 
were as good seamen as themselves, better shipbuilders, 
and more expert as gunners ft)rgetting, too, the exploits of 



1 



III. RErUBLIC. 171 

Paul Jones, ventured on frigate duels with inferior arma- 
ments and lost three frigates, one of which was carried 
into an American port. The shock was far greater than 
the loss, and was but half counteracted by a victory in a 
duel on equal terms between the Sliannon and the Chesa- 181 ;. 
peake. On the other hand five thousand British regulars 
under Ross, landing on the American coast, paraded the 
country at their ease, scattered before them the militia 
which was drawn out to meet them at Bladensburer and 18U. 
took Washington, giving thereby one more proof of the 
ascendancy of discipline in war. The public buildings at 
Washington were burned, an act of folly and vandalism 
which no plea of retaliation for American ravages in 
Canada could warrant. The object of war is a good peace, 
and the fewer thorns are left in the heart of the enemy 
the better the peace will be. 

Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Southern fire-eaters were 
hot for the war, but elsewhere there was luke-warmness or 
worse. The ranks of the army were unfilled, the finances 
were exhausted, specie payments were suspended, the 
military administration had disgracefully broken down. 
Roused by the loss of the three frigates, Great Britain put 
forth her naval power, and the American ports underwent 
strict blockade. Privateering, though destructive, was un- 
remunerative and even cried out for government bounties • 
to keep it on foot. In New England discontent approached 
the point of secession, and a convention of New England 
States at Hartford not only protested against the war but 
demanded an organic change in confederation. Mean- 
time the fortunes of Napoleon sank at Moscow, at Leipsic, 
at Vittoria. England's fleets and armies, released from 
the struggle with him, were set free for action in America. 



172 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

The war party then gave way and envoys were sent' to 
Ghent to treat for peace. It was a peace which showed 
that there ought to have been no war, for no question was 
settled, nor was anything surrendered on either side. The 
questions of belligerent rights and of impressment, about 
which America had ostensibly gone to war, were simply 
allowed to drop. Mr. Clay was one of the American 
envoys. He did his best to make the negotiations mis- 
carry, but at last he set his hand to the treaty. There 
were those in England who desired that she should con- 
tinue the war, bringing her full force, now at liberty, to 
bear, and send Wellington to America. But if the result 
had been an extension of her American territories with a 
deeper entanglement in American affairs, the gain would 
have been a loss. That there was no real object to be at- 
tained was Wellington's own judgment. Peace was wel- 
come to all except the farmers on the northern frontier of 
the United States who had been growing rich by selling 
supplies to the British troops. 

There was no ocean cable in those days. Peace had 
already been made at Ghent, when at New Orleans General 
Pakenham, possessed apparently with the same blind con- 
fidence which had been shown by the British commander 
1815. at Bunker's Hill, led his troops to the attack of the impreg- 
nable and almost unapproachable breastworks with which 
the city had been protected by the skill and energy of 
General Andrew Jackson, who appearing on the scene at 
a decisive moment, showed his extraordinary powers of 
command. The British soldiers, formed by the pedantry 
of their commander in close column and unable to reach 
their enemy, fell helplessly under the fire poured upon 
them in perfect security by the riflemen who swarmed be- 



in. REPUBLIC. 173 

hind the breastworks. The death of the British Com- 
mander-in-Chief, by causing confusion, enhanced the 
disaster. At the single point where the veterans did 
encounter their enemy, he, as Jackson himself frankly said, 
fled before them. The American loss in killed and wounded 
was thirteen. Such was the battle of New Orleans. It 
would have been almost as much of a battle and a victory 
had the British army been overwhelmed by the Mississippi. 
But the affair had important results, for it made General 
Jackson the idol of the American people, and the auto- 
cratic President of the United States. 

The war is sometimes justified on account of its sup- 
posed effect in consolidating American union. To make 
war for such a purpose would surely be a satanic policy. 
Instead of consolidation, the war nearly produced seces- 
sion, to the very verge of which it drove New England. 
The true instruments of consolidation were, not the 
war, but the improved means of intercommunication, the 
national roads, the canals, the steamships, the railways, to 
which the period following the war gave birth, as well as 
the growing activity of the press, and the other intellectual 
agencies which overcome geographical distance. The fruit 
of moral or political effort is not to be won by violence. 
A second war of independence the war of 1812 has been 
called, but how could America be made politically more 
independent of the mother country, and how could war 
sever the historical bond or weaken the influences which 
a mother country will always exercise over a colony, let 
the political relation be what it will? Mental independ- 
ence was promoted, not by the war, but by migration 
westward which left old world ideas and sentiments 
behind. Violent antipathies like passionate attachments, 



174 THE UNITE]) STATES. chap. 

as Washington said, do not emancipate but enslave. The 
schism in the Anglo-Saxon race had been renewed, and 
Canada, instead of being annexed, had been estranged. 
On industry and commerce and the wealth of the nation 
the effects of war are always the same. Such is the 
debt of gratitude due to the " war-hawks." It will not be 
much increased if to the material results of the conflict we 
add an inflation of military pride which there was nothing 
in the balance of victory and defeat to warrant, but which 
nevertheless ensued. 

Twenty years afterwards the eyes of American politi- 
cians desirous of aggrandizement were once more turned 
toward the British dominions in North America by a Cana- 
dian rebellion which stretched out its arms for aid to the 
republicanism of the United States. But national ambition 
1837. was not aroused. Sympathy was confined to filibustering 
along the border. A bubble of war which the burning 
of the Caroline^ an American armed vessel, by Canadians 
had blown, burst after an international altercation without 
harm. There still remained between Great Britain and 
America dangerous questions about boundaries in Maine 
and Oregon. The Oregon question at one time assumed 
an angry form, and in the United States democratic mobs 
and " war-hawks " were shouting " fifty-four forty or fight," 
while their British counterparts, such as Palmerston, were 
or affected to be not less eager for the fray. But diplo- 
macy, under the auspices of such statesmen as Peel and 
Webster, brought about a peaceful settlement, Canada per- 
haps receiving in both cases less than her due, but as much 
as could be expected by a dependency which leaned upon 
the arm of the Imperial country, itself contributing nothing 
to the armaments of the empire. The settlement was made 



in. REPUBLIC. 175 

easier by the indiffei'ence of the southern fire-eaters to ex- 
tensions of territory in the north which would turn the 
political balance in favour of freedom. War and seiious 
danger of war being at an end, American hatred of England 
might have subsided had not Irish immigrants brought 
with them their inveterate feud and imposed their senti- 
ment on the politicians and press of the United States. 

After Madison came Monroe, the last of the Virginian 1817. 
line, who was elected with ease and re-elected virtually by 
acclamation. Since the day of his Jacobin accolade he 
had become a sober and commonplace statesman. Wash- 
ington was his model, and something like the state of the 
Washington period reigned again at the White House. 
Monroe's title to renown is the doctrine, stamped with 
his name, which proclaims the new world independent of 
the old. The American dependencies of Spain had now 
risen in revolt against the Imperial country, while in Spain 
herself the Holy Alliance dominating over Europe had by 
the hand of the restored Bourbons of France crushed 
parliamentary government and reinstalled absolute mon- 
archy. There was reason to fear that the Alliance meant 
to extend its policy of reaction to South America and 
perhaps to place a Bourbon on the throne of a South 
American Empire. It was to close the door against any- 
thing of this kind that Monroe put forth his manifesto, 
which warns the European powers that the western hemi- 
sphere is no longer a field either for their colonization or 
for their political interference. Any attempt on the part 
of a European power to control the destiny of an Amer- 
ican community the American President declares will 
be viewed as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposi- 
tion towards the United States ; implying thereby, be it 



176 THE UNITED STATES. chap. hi. 

observed, that the United States are the guardian power 
of the hemisphere. It may be that Monroe was not the 
sole or the first promulgator of the doctrine. But by him 
it was propounded most clearly and at a juncture which 
gave it practical force. Great Britain and the United 
States were now acting in union. For Great Britain, 
whose function it has always been to preserve the balance 
of tendencies as well as of power in Europe, was opposed 
to the domination of the Holy Alliance as she had been to 
that of Napoleon, and Canning, as her foreign minister, 
was beginning to show his liberal side. 

Clay's ardent spirit would have led him at once to give 
the embrace of fraternity to the new-born Republics of 
South America. More cautious counsels prevailed and 
confined the action of the government to the promulgation 
of the Monroe doctrine and a prompt recognition of South 
American independence. It soon appeared even to Clay 
himself what sort of embrace that of the South American 
Republics would have been. He had been transported 
with the glorious spectacle of eighteen millions of people 
struggling to burst their chains and be free. He soon had 
reason to confess that the result of bursting chains, in the 
case of those who are unfit for freedom, is not freedom 
but a change of chain. Webster may have meant to cap 
Clay as well as to show his cultivated feeling for the 
parent of literature and art when in a grand oration he 
proposed to send a commissioner as an envoy of sympathy 
to insurgent Greece. Here the Washingtonian tradition 
of non-interference in European affairs prevailed. Indeed 
if the Monroe doctrine was to be respected and Europe 
was to keep her hands off America, it was necessary that 
America should keep her hands off Europe. 



CHAPTER IV. 



DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 



npHE eight years of Monroe's Presidency were a halcyon 
period after the storm of war ; they were years of re- 
vived commerce, of return to specie payments, of renewed 
immigration, of the continued expansion westward which 
was not only enlarging the area of equalized wealth and 
the field of the great political experiment, but shifting 
the centre of power from New England and Virginia 
towards the west. There was a general absence, during 
these years, of great party questions and a lull in party 
strife which caused Monroe's Presidency to be called the 
era of good feeling. The calm, however, was broken by 
one blast which, though it died away for the time, was the 
premonitory gust of a tremendous storm. Free and slave 
States had so far been admitted to the Union in pairs, one 
slave State and one free, so that the political balance 
between the two interests was preserved, not in the House 
of Representatives, where the representation was by popu- 
lation, but in the Senate, where each State, large or small, 
had two members. The demand of Missouri, a part of the 
Louisiana purchase, over which slavery prevailed, to be 
admitted as a State, threatened to upset the balance, and 
awakened the dormant but mortal antagonism between 
slavery and freedom. Conscience, indeed, though drugged 

177 



178 THE UN1TP:D STATES. chap. 

by policy had never entirely slumbered. Among the Qua- 
kers of Pennsylvania it had remained awake. The oppo- 
nents of slavery moved for its exclusion from Missouri as 
a condition of her admission to the Union. The struggle 
between them and the friends of slavery was long and 
angry. It brought the national House into collision with 
the federal Senate. When apparently composed, it broke 
out again in a new form. But at length fear for the sta- 
bility of the Union, which by this time had become an 
object of general worship, prevailed, and a compromise was 
effected by which all north of the latitude thirty-six, thirty, 
saving territory included in Missouri, was secured for free- 
dom, and all south of that line was given up to slavery. 
1820. The political balance was preserved by the simultaneous 
admission of Maine. The truce thus obtained lasted, so 
far as the national parties were concerned, for twenty years, 
proving by its duration the paramount importance attached 
by the American people to their Union. But three omi- 
nous results of the struggle still remained. In the first 
place the geographical line had been drawn between the 
domain, social and political, of slavery and that of freedom. 
In the second place it had been shown that whatever pains 
might be taken to designate slavery as a purely domestic 
institution over which the national government had no 
jurisdiction, and with which the national conscience was 
unconcerned, the fact was that the question was national 
and one with which the national government would in the 
end be compelled to deal. In the third place slavery had 
shown itself no longer as a vanishing relic of the past, but 
as a permanent interest and power. Whitney's invention 
of the cotton gin had enormously increased the production 
of cotton, and with it the value of slave labour and the 
addiction of the South to the system. 



IV. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 179 

The lull of party was no lull of personal ambition or 
of personal contests for the Presidency. Now we see 
in full force the Presidential fever and its effects on the 
character and conduct of public men. Soon in place of the 
Congressional caucus, through which the politicians of each 
party had hitherto nominated candidates for the Presidency, 
comes the popular convention, at first local and then 
national, with the grand campaign of party with its 
sinister accessories such as we have it at the present 
day. Now culminates the reign of the " machine," with its 
retinue of office-seeking workers, first perfected in New 
York by DeWitt Clinton and Van Buren, with their 
Albany Regency and their " Bucktails." Foremost in the 
arena were Henry Clay the Kentuckian, Daniel Webster 
the New Englander, and John C. Calhoun of South Caro- 
lina. Clay was perhaps the first consummate party leader 
of the Congressional and platform type, Jefferson having 
worked, not on the platform, but in the closet and through 
the press. He was a paragon of the personal fascination 
now styled magnetism. Magnetic, indeed, his manner and 
voice must have been if they could make the speeches that 
he has left us pass for the most cogent reasoning and the 
highest eloquence. Yet multitudes came from distances, 
in those days immense, to hear him, A cynical critic said 
that Clay could get more people to listen to him and fewer 
people to vote for him than any other man in the Union. 
He however did get many votes though never quite enough. 
His power of winning the hearts of men was unique. When 
at last he missed his prize by losing the election for the 
Presidency his partisans wept like children ; one of them 
is said to have died of grief. He was ardently patriotic, 
after the war-hawk fashion, but the Presidency was always 



180 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

in his thoughts and its attraction accounts for the per- 
turbations of liis political orbit. He said that he would 
rather be right than be President ; but it has been too truly 
remarked that even at the moment of that memorable 
utterance he was thinking more of being President than 
of being right. His policy and sentiments were intensely 
American and by the cosmopolitans would now be desig- 
nated as jingo. He was a protectionist on what he deemed 
patriotic grounds, and the chief author of a system to which 
Hamilton had only moderately inclined. He was for 
national expenditure on public works, for national grants 
of money to the States, for everything that could magnify 
the nation. The Union, as the palladium of national 
greatness, was his idol, and his proudest achievements as a 
statesman were compromises by which the Union was saved 
for a time when it had been imperilled by collision between 
the slave States and the free. Over each of these com- 
promises he drew the brilliant rainbow of complacent elo- 
quence, which, however, proved no guarantee against the 
flood. A native of the great slave State of Virginia, 
settled in Kentucky where slavery existed though it did 
not predominate, he seems at least to have felt the evils of 
the system, and he had done himself credit by opposition 
to it in his earlier days. But the highest and the absorb- 
ing object of his affection was national greatness embodied 
in the Union. 

As Henry Clay was a genuine, though adopted, son of 
Kentucky, so Daniel Webster was a genuine son of New 
England. His character was cast in the Puritan mould, 
and formed by the New England school system under 
which he had been a teacher as Avell as a pupil. He was 
grave, staid, and in the cast of his character moral and 



IV. DEMOCKACY AND SLAVERY. 181 

devout. In his later years he was given to running care- 
lessly into debt and like many other men of his day too 
fond of wine. As an orator of reason he has no superior 
if he has an equal in the English language. It is difficult 
at least to say what political speech can vie in logical force 
and imiDressiveness with his speech defending the Union 
in reply to the southern separatist Hayne, or what forensic 
speech excels in the same qualities his speech for the prose- 
cution in the murder case of White. By the speech in 1830. 
reply to Hayne he produced a great and permanent effect 
on the political sentiment of the American people. — 
"While the union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying 
prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. 
Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant 
that, in my day at least, that curtain may not rise. God 
grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies 
behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the 
last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on 
the broken and dishonoured fragments of a once glorious 
union ; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent ; on a 
land rent with civil feuds, or drenched it may be in frater- 
nal blood ! Let their last feeble and lingering glance 
rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now 
known and honoured throughout the earth, still full high 
advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original 
lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star 
obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interroga- 
tory as What is all this worth? nor those other words of 
delusion and folly Liberty first, and Union afterwards, but 
everywhere spread all over in characters of living light 
blazing in all its ample folds as they float over the sea and 
over the land and in every wind under the whole heavens 



182 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

that other sentiment dear to every true American heart — 
Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." 
These words thrilled through all American hearts at the 
time, remained engraved in all American hearts forever. 
We must bear in mind their influence and the force of the 
sentiment to which they appealed when we find the Ameri- 
can people wavering between morality and the Union. 
Webster's economical and financial speeches are also first 
rate of their kind. His style has been compared to the 
strokes of a trip hammer, which his sentences resembled in 
measured force but not in monotony. The majesty of 
intellect sat on his beetling brow and he had the look and 
port of Jove. He was and felt himself a king. It is told 
of him that when one of his notes had fallen due, he majes- 
tically waved his hand and said " Let it be paid." All men 
bowed down to him ; all men crowded to hear him. He 
swayed the opinions of all men ; but he did not, like Clay, 
win their hearts. He never was a great party leader, nor 
was he ever a hopeful candidate for the Presidency. It 
must be added that his moral strength was not equal to 
his power of mind. In regard to the great moral question 
of slavery, his desire of the Presidency at last overcame 
his principle. In his general sentiments and opinions he 
was a descendant of the old Federalist party, a republican 
without being a democrat, a believer in property as a quali- 
fication for political power, an upholder both in his State 
and in the federation of the conservative parts of the con- 
stitution, as well as devoutly loyal to the Union. 

A figure in some respects more striking than that of 
either Clay or Webster, and one to which a melancholy 
interest attaches, is that of John C. Calhoun of South 
Carolina. Calhoun was a man of Scotch-Irish origin, with 



IV. DEMOCKACY AND SLAVEKY. 183 

the fervent but sombre energy characteristic of that race. 
By temper he was a political Calvinist, while South Caro- 
lina gave him for a creed slavery, of which she was the 
centre and the soul. As a speaker he impressed, not by 
anything that appealed to the imagination, but by intense 
earnestness and logical force. On his face and character 
there was a shade of sadness which deepened as his career 
took a more tragic turn. No one questioned his purity or 
sincerity, yet in his course also the effect of the Presiden- 
tial fever may be traced. He set out with Clay as one of 
the war party of 1812, devoted to national greatness. He 
walked at first in the trodden path of ambition ; was 
Vice-President, was Secretary of State, and had the Presi- 
dency in view. But a cloud came over his prospects and 
he was gradually led to fall back on slavery as his peculiar 
platform, to identify himself with the institution, to be- 
come not onh^ its defender but its propagator, and, in its 
interest, the upholder of State right. He was the first 
statesman who, discarding not only the philosophic con- 
demnation of slavery fashionable among the old republi- 
cans of the South but the apologies of its moderate uphold- 
ers, proclaimed that slavery was a positive good, that it 
was the only relation possible between the white and black 
races, and even that the system of society based on it was 
the best and alone stable, while the system based on free- 
dom and equality was unstable and anarchic. " Many in 
the South,'' he said, " had once believed that slavery was a 
moral and political evil. But that folly and delusion are 
gone. We see it now in its true light and regard it as 
the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the 
world." He was even ready to maintain that it gave the 
labourer more than was given him by free labour, while it 



184 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

exempted society from the disorders and dangers arising 
out of the conflict between labour and capital. Calhoun 
became the idol and the guiding star of the slave-owning 
aristocracy, above all of the hot Southern youth. When he 
died there was laid over his grave at Charleston, a great 
slal) of marble inscribed with the sintrle word " Calhoun " 
as the sufficient epitaph of his greatness. He was one of 
the men who are born to bring questions to an issue. He 
distinctly saw that on the two sides of the geographical 
line which separated freedom from slavery there were two 
communities opposed to each other in social and political 
structure, in character, sentiment, and interest, which 
though yoked together by the union were not united. His 
proposal of two Presidents, one for the free States, the 
other for the slave States, each with a veto on all national 
legislation, was impracticable and grotesque, but it pointed 
true to the nature of the problem. 

Oratory and orators ruled the hour. The chief scene of 
the great debates of this period was the Senate, always 
attractive of the highest ability. Its number was less than 
fifty, but the audience, though small, was of the choicest, 
and on grand occasions the galleries were crowded by 
people not only from Washington but from distant cities. 
Of the struggle between freedom and slavery the Senate 
was the natural arena, because there, representation being 
by States, the forces were evenly balanced, whereas in 
the House of Representatives, the population of the free 
States, increasing faster than that of the slave States, had 
a great preponderance notwithstanding the constitutional 
compromise which gave slavery two votes for every three 
slaves. Thus, in regard to the two groups of States, the 
Senate was the safeguard of the federal against the national 



IV-. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 185 

principle. Nor were Clay, Webster, and Calhoun the 
only Senators of mark. Not far beneath them was Benton 
from Missouri, which was a western and semi-slave State, 
apt to breed statesmen neutral or wavering on the ques- 
tion of slaver}^ and caring most for the Union. Benton 
was for thirty years a Senator. He was of coarse mould 
compared with the other three, but of great power, gigan- 
tic industry, and possessed of an extensive knowledge 
of politics, which he sometimos grotesquely displayed ; 
perhaps the first thorough specimen of a politician. Math a 
virtue genuine but not adamantine, and a patriotism which 
yielded only to the strong exigencies of party, it might be 
in the sincere belief that the party was the country. 
Hardly to be named with these men was John Randolph, 
a Virginian of high family, with more than the arrogance 
of his class, who used to come into the Senate in his hunt- 
ing dress with his hunting whip in his hand, and behave 
as if he were in his kennel ; a man of natural ability, with- 
out good sense or power of self-control, firmly attached 
to no party or even opinion, keen and reckless in in- 
vective, the terror of those at whom his lean finger was 
pointed in debate, at last a political wreck and almost a 
maniac. Randolph sometimes told wholesome truths in 
a pungent way. 

Apart from slavery the great question was the tariff. 
Before the war New England had been commercial, and as 
such in favour of free trade. The war, suspending her 
commerce turned her to manufactures to which it afforded 
strict protection. Peace bringing an influx of British 
goods made New England manufacturers crave for a 
protective tariff. Clay on patriotic grounds was the 
ardent advocate of what he styled the American system. 



186 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

though he was reminded by Webster that the system, by 
his own showing, had not been American but European. 
" This favourite American policy, sir," said Webster, " is 
what America has never tried, and this odious foreign 
policy is what we are told foreign States have never pur- 
sued. Sir, that is the truest American policy which shall 
most usefully employ American capital and American 
labour, and best sustain the whole population. With me 
it is a fundamental axiom that is interwoven with all my 
opinions that the great interests of the country are united 
and inseparable, that agriculture, commerce, and manu- 
factures will prosper together or languish together, and 
that all legislation is dangerous which proposes to benefit 
one of these without looking to consequences which may 
fall on the others." Webster at first opposed protection, 
and upheld with admirable breadth, clearness, and cogency 
the doctrine of Adam Smith. There is nothing better 
on the side of free trade than his speeches. He crushed 
the fallacy of the balance of trade, showing by a familiar 
example that if the excess in value of imports over ex- 
ports proved the trader to be a loser, the fruits of the most 
gainful voyage might be set down as a loss. He ex- 
pounded the true nature of commerce as being not a 
gambling among nations for a stake, to be won by some 
and lost by others, not tending to impoverish one of the 
parties to it while it enriched the other, but making all 
parties gain, all parties alike profit, all parties grow rich. 
He showed that in buying foreign articles we do not en- 
courage foreign labour to the prejudice of our own, since 
every such article, being earned by our own labour, is as 
much the product of our own labour as if we had manu- 
factured it ourselves. " I know," he said, " it would be 



k 



TV. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 187 

very easy to promote manufactures, at least for a time, but 
probably only for a short time. If we might act in dis- 
regard of other interests we could cause a sudden transfer 
of capital and a violent change in the pursuits of men. 
We could exceedingly benefit some classes by these means ; 
what then would become of the interests of others ? " If 
Adam Smith had been before him in all this, he gave it 
new force by his eloquence and put on it the stamp of 
practical statesmanship. Webster's arguments have lost 
none of their weight though he afterwards showed his 
want of moral stability by striking his flag to protection 
and rather lamely defending his inconsistency on the plea 
that, though his principles remained unchanged, protection 
having then become the established system, there was 
nothing for him but to accept it and look to the interests 
of his own constituents. The great speech of Clay on 
American industry is a declamation based throughout on 
the assumption that protection is patriotic, as though any 
economical measure could be patriotic which was not pro- 
ductive of wealth to the whole nation. Clay's knowledge 
of economical history and of history in general may be 
measured by his reference to Spain as a nation which liad 
declined owing to her lack of a protectionist system. His 
clearness of economic vision may be measured by his dic- 
tum, uttered in defence of protectionism, that " the great 
desideratum in political economy is the same as in private 
pursuits ; that is, what is the best application of the 
aggregate industry of a nation that can be made honestly 
to produce the largest sum of national wealth ? " He 
could not have stated more clearly the main argument of 
his opponents. With more reason might Clay point to the 
practice of other nations and notably to that of England 



188 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

which still had and was destined for many years longer to 
have her corn laws and Navigation Act. It must also be 
remembered in justice to Clay and others who were trying 
to force manufactures that the evils of the factory system 
had not then been seen on a large scale. Further it 
must be said that Clay regarded protection as temporary, 
and perhaps could hardly have been expected to foresee 
that what was granted as temporary would, by the com- 
bined force of the favoured interests, be made eternal. 
Some demurred, apparently with reason, to the assump- 
tion by Congress of a power of imposing taxes for any 
purpose but that of revenue. The constitution gave Con- 
gress power to regulate commerce, but not to regulate 
industry or to force the people to leave one industry for 
another. The vices of protectionism soon appeared. In 
1828 a conjunction of sinister interests carried by log- 
rolling for their own benefit a tariff which was justly styled 
the tariff of abominations. We are told that members 
of Congress voted for the bill at the bidding of their con- 
stituents while they were opposed to its objects, foresee- 
ing the abuses which it entailed, and that it offered the 
means of wide-spread bribery in the elections. We see 
incidentally that the elective system had disclosed another 
of its fatal liabilities, and that the representative instead 
of being a man of superior lights, picked out for the great 
work of legislation, was becoming a mere delegate and the 
mouth-piece of his constituency without free judgment or 
conscience of his own. 

With reference to this tariff of 1828 Benton in his 
history of the Senate says, "tariff bills each exceeding 
the other in its degree of protection have become a regular 
appendage of our Presidential elections, coming round in 



ir. DEMOCKACY AND SLAVERY. 189 

every cycle of four years with that returning event." 
McDuffie, from South Carolina, raised with an apocalyp- 
tic vehemence the veil of the future. " Sir, when I con- 
sider that by a single Act like the present from five to 
ten millions of dollars may be transferred annually from 
one part of the community to another, when I consider 
the disguise of disinterested patriotism under which the 
basest and most profligate ambition may perpetrate such 
an act of injustice and political prostitution, I cannot hesi- 
tate for a moment to j^ronounce this very system of indi- 
rect bounties the most stupendous instrument of corruption 
ever placed in the hands of public functionaries. It brings 
ambition and avarice and wealth into a combination which 
it is fearful to contemplate, because it is almost impossible 
to resist. Do we not perceive at this very moment the 
extraordinary and melancholy spectacle of less than one 
hundred thousand capitalists by means of this unhallowed 
combination exercising an absolute and despotic control 
over the opinions of eight millions of free citizens and the 
fortunes and destinies of ten millions? Sir, I will not 
anticipate or forbode evil. I will not permit myself to 
believe that the Presidency of the United States will ever 
be bought and sold by this system of bounties and pro- 
hibitions ; but I must say that there are certain quarters 
of this Union in which, if a candidate for the Presidency 
were to come forward with the Harrisburg tariff in his 
hand, nothing could resist his pretensions if his adversary 
were opposed to this unjust system of oppression. Yes, 
sir, that bill would be a talisman which could give a 
charmed existence to the candidate who would pledge him- 
self to support it ; and although he were covered with all 
the ' multiplying villanies of nature,' the most immaculate 



190 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

patriot and profound statesman in the nation could hold 
no competition with him if he should refuse to grant this 
new species of imperial donative." Mr. McDuffie, coming 
from the South which exported and did not manufacture, 
was perhaps enlightened, as his opponents were blinded, 
by local interest. In the economical hrmament it was still 
early dawn. To Clay and his friends the policy of foster- 
ing native iudustries till they were able to stand alone 
might well seem wise. Experience had not yet shown 
that the protection once given would never be willingly 
resigned, and that a combination of privileged interests 
log-rolling for each other would be sure to prevail over 
the public good. But it may surely be said that for a 
nation so active, so intelligent, so inventive, perfect indus- 
trial liberty would alwaj's have been best. 

Not unconnected with the question between free trade 
and protection was that of the sale of public lands. Should 
they be regarded as a national property out of which profit 
was to be made by the federal government, or should they 
be thrown open freely to the settler? The protectionists 
generally leant to the former, free traders to the latter and 
more liberal side. The effect of throwing freely open all 
the lands of the west to settlement was to diminish the 
value of the lands in the east and by drawing away labour 
westwards to enhance its price to the eastern employer. 
After a temporary obstruction of settlement and some 
gambling and speculation in public lands the higher 
interest prevailed. 

National expenditure on improvements, such as the 
great Cumberland road, was an issue on which those who 
championed a strong nationality and a liberal interpreta- 
tion of the constitution in favour of the central government 



I 



k 



IV. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 191 

were pitted against the jealous upholders of strict right and 
strict construction. In this case also the opponents of tlie 
policy might have pointed to the dangers of corruption. 

For the succession to Monroe there were four com- 1824. 
petitors : John Quincy Adams, son of the President ; 
Henry Clay ; Crawford, a powerful and crafty politician, 
,who showed the tenacity of the Presidential fever by re- 
maining a candidate when he had been stricken with 
paralysis ; and Andrew Jackson, whose blood-red star was 
now rising above the political horizon and threatening 
with extinction those of the politicians who had evoked 
the war spirit for the purposes of their own ambition. 
Jackson had ninety electoral votes, Adams eighty-four, 
Crawford forty-one, and Clay thirty-seven. Xo one hav- 
ing a clear majority the election was thrown by the article 
of the constitution providing for the case into the House 
of Representatives, while the decision was thrown into the 
hands of Clay, who though out of the pale of election 
himself, as the choice of the House was confined to the 
three having the highest number of votes, commanded 
followers enough to turn the scale. Clay decided in 
favour of Adams. The Jacksonians contended that their 
man having the largest number of votes was the choice of 
the people, whose fiat the House ought to have registered. 
To which the answer was, first, that there was nothing 
to show that in a contest between Jackson and Adams by 
themselves Jackson would have had the majority, and in 
the second jDlace that to make a plurality decisive would 
be to abrogate an article of the constitution. Clay, per- 
haps too conscious of rectitude, ventured to accept the 
Secretar3^ship of State from the man whom his influence 
had made President. The Jacksonians cried out that he 



192 THE UNITED STATES. CH,vr. 

had been bought and the calumny systematically and 
unscrupulously worked by his enemies pursued him to his 
grave. 
1825. Monroe was the last President of the Virginian line, 
John Quincy Adams the last from New England. The 
centre of power was passing from the east to the west. 
Adams was a genuine New Englander of the Puritan 
stock, austerely moral, from his boyhood laboriously 
self-trained, not only staid but solemn in his teens, in- 
tensely self-conscious, ever engaged in self-examination, 
the punctual keeper of a voluminous diary, an invariably 
early riser, a daily reader of the Bible even in the White 
House, scrupulously methodical and strictly upright in all 
his ways ; but testy, unconciliatory, unsympathetic, abso- 
lutely destitute of all the arts by which popularity is won. 
His election does the highest credit to the respect of the 
electors for public virtue unadorned. The peculiar features 
of his father's character were so intensified in him that he 
may be deemed the typical figure rather than his father. In 
opinions he was a Federalist who having broken with his 
party on the question of foreign relations and the embargo 
had been put out of its pale but had retained its general 
mould. As he was about the last President chosen for 
merit not for availability, so he was about the last whose 
only rule was not party but the public service. So strictly 
did he observe the principle of permanency and purity in 
the Civil Service, that he refused to dismiss from office 
a Postmaster-General whom he knew to be intriguing 
against him. The demagogic era had come but he would 
not recognize its coming. He absolutely refused to go on 
the stump, to conciliate the press, to do anything for the 
purpose of courting popularity and making himself a 



IV. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 193 

party. His obstinacy was fatal to his ambition bnt is not 
dishonourable to his memory. 

Adams was a candidate for the usual second term. But 1828. 
he stood no chance against Jackson whose candidacy had 
commenced on the morrow of the last election. Nobody 
stands much chance against a successful soldier in a 
country where military glory is rare. In the United 
States there have been, if we include Washington, five 
distinct soldier Presidents, while a military record has 
contributed to other elections and nominations. In Eugf- 
land, an old war power, but one man can be said to have 
been made prime minister by glory in war, and the Duke 
of Wellington was not merely a soldier, since besides 
having been in Parliament as a young man and Irish 
Secretary, he was almost the chief political adviser of 
monarchical and aristocratic Europe. Military glory more- 
over is outside the pale of ordinary rivalries and escapes 
the envy which in all democracies has great force. Jack- 
son, though he had once been in Congress, as we have 
seen, and had vented his jealous spleen on Washington, 
was a fighter, with an iron will and great powers of com- 
mand, ill educated, destitute of the knowledge and the 
habits of a statesman, with an uncontrolled temper and 
almost as much swayed by passion as any Indian chief, 
though, like many an Indian chief, he could bear himself 
when he pleased with dignity and even with grace. That 
he had beaten the British at New Orleans was his title to 
the headship of the nation, and he had not lessened his 
popularity by the lawless execution of two Englishmen, 
Ambrister and Arbuthnot, or by some acts of equally 
lawless aggression on Spanish territory ; outrages against 
which a moral minority in Congress had protested in vain, 



194 THE UNITED STATES. chai-. 

while John Quincy Adams, swayed probably by his dislike 
of England, had for once deviated from his moral course 
and helped to whitewash the man who was destined to 
oust him from the Presidential chair. But a greater force 
even than that of military renown was bearing on Andrew 
Jackson to the Presidency. Hitherto the Republic had 
not been democratic. The common people had been con- 
tent with their votes and had left government to an aris- 
tocracy of intellect drawn largely from the bar. But now 
they desired to govern. They were beginning to suspect 
that they were fooled by intellect and to wish to see one 
of themselves in power. Andrew Jackson was one of 
themselves ; he was not only the old hero but " Old Hick- 
ory," a plain honest man who would govern by a good 
homely rule, sweep away abuses, and see that no more 
tricks were played by superior cunning upon the people. 
To rule, a multitude must be incarnate in a man, and the 
American multitude was incarnate in Andrew Jackson. 
The old hero's transcendent availability drew around his 
standard a host of machine politicians, office-seekers, and 
journalists, to blow his trumpet and organize the cam' 
paign in his favour. Jackson Committees were formed 
all over the country to carry on the crusade, and were 
aided by a partisan press inspired from a centre. This 
was perhaps the first regularly organized campaign. 
Feeling was red hot and calumny was rife. Adams was 
charged with monarchism, with aristocracy, with corrup- 
tion, with lil)el, witli odious wealth, with insolvency, with 
greediness of public money, with being wrong in his public 
accounts, with charging for fictitious journeys, with using 
government servants to electioneer for him, with corrupt- 
ing the civil service, with employing the federal patronage 



V. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 195 

to influence elections, with charging the public for a 
billiard table which he put in the White House, with 
patronizing duelling (while Jackson was a desperate 
duellist), with having quarrelled with his father, with 
acting as procurer to the Emperor of Russia, with having 
married an Englishwoman. On the other hand aspersions 
were cast on Jackson's somewhat irregular marriage, which 
goaded him to fury. The result was that Jackson got 178 
electoral votes to 83 for Adams. The difference in the 
popular vote was not so large, Adams having 508,064 
to Jackson's 648,273. 

Jackson, and " triumphant democracy " in his train, 1829. 
made their victorious entry into Washington with an 
enormous crowd largely composed of office-seekers who 
had worked for them in the campaign. An eye-witness 
has described the sight as very like the inundation of 
Rome by the northern barbarians, except that in this case 
the tumultuous tide, instead of coming from the north, 
came from the west and the south. " Strange faces," says 
the same narrator, "filled every public place, and every 
face seemed to bear defiance on its brow." The city as 
well as the lobby swarmed with Jacksonian editors. On 
the morning of the inauguration the neighbourhood of the 
capitol was an agitated sea of heads, and it was necessary 
to repress the surging crowd by stretching a ship's cable 
across the flight of steps. After the inauguration came 
a reception. There was orange punch by the barrelful, 
but as the waiters opened the door a rush was made, the 
glasses were broken, the pails of liquor were upset and 
the semblance of order could be restored only by carrying 
tubs of punch into the garden to draw off the crowd from 
the rooms. Men stood in muddy boots on the damask 



k 



196 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

covered chairs to get a sight of the President. " The 
reign of King Mob seemed triumphant," says Judge Story, 
who was ghid to escape from the scene. 

The seat of government having been stormed by Gen- 
eral Jackson and his train was at once given up to pillage. 
" To the victors belong the spoils," was the saying of 
Marcy, a New York manager, not of Jackson ; but the 
sequel of Jackson's victory was its first memorable illustra- 
tion. A ruthless proscription swept the Civil Service to 
make places for Jackson's political soldiery. Jefferson, 
not without excuse, made removals by tens ; Jackson made 
them by hundreds and Avithout excuse since he followed a 
President who in his dealings with the Civil Service was 
not pure only but a purist. Webster tells that the num- 
ber of dismissals was reckoned at not less than 2,000. 
There was a reign of terror in Washington, no civil ser- 
vant feeling sure for a day of his head ; a whisper killed, 
and perfidy was sometimes added to the cruelty of turning 
an innocent official, perhaps in advanced age, upon the 
street. No merit or record would save you. Major Mel- 
ville was a veteran of the revolution and had been one of 
the Boston Tea-Party, yet he was turned out of a place in 
the Custom House which he had held for many years. 
Those who could get access to Jackson had a chance of 
escaping by appeals to his vanity. One official is said to 
have saved his head by begging for the old hero's old pipe. 
Thus was inaugurated the sjDoils system together with 
the trade of place-hunting by a President who came 
probably with a sincere desire of clearing government 
from corruption and of making simple honesty the rule, 
and of whom it must in justice be said that his own hands 
were perfectly clean. 



IV. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 197 

The new court was soon convulsed by a court quarrel. 
Eaton, a member of Jackson's Cabinet, had married a 
widow who before her marriage had lived in Washington 
as Peggy O'Neil, and whose reputation under her maiden 
name had been doubtful. The wives of other cabinet 
ministers and the great ladies of Washington refused to 
visit Mrs. Eaton. Jackson made it a personal quarrel and 
threw himself into it with his usual fury. He is supposed 
to have been fired by the recollection of the aspersions 
cast at the time of the election on his own marriage to a 
wife to whom he was tenderly attached. Mr. Van Buren, 
being a widower and having no female fastidiousness to 
combat, was able to call on Mrs. Eaton and thereby to 
establish himself firmly in Jackson's favour. But other 
ministers failed to overcome the virtuous pride of their 
ladies and a Cabinet crisis was the result. The Dutch 
ambassador was threatened with a demand for his recall, 
because his wife had refused to sit by the side of Mrs. 
Eaton. Whatever may have been Mrs. Eaton's real char- 
acter, and whether the scrupjles of those who declined her 
society were overstrained or not, thanks may be due to 
the Washington ladies who in the catastrophe of public 
principle stood out for the purity of domestic life. 

Van Buren, a sagacious, smooth, and wily manager of 
New York politics, was the chief of Jackson's regular 
counsellors and no doubt knew how to play upon his 
temper. But to his regular counsellors Jackson preferred 
a set of familiars who were called his Kitchen Cabinet. 
These men, experts in wire-pulling, used their arts to keep 
alive the sentiment which had carried their chief to power, 
inspired his partisan press, and traduced his enemies 
through its organs. 



198 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

Jackson regarded himself as the only direct and gen nine 
1 epresentative of the people. The authority of Congress 
and of the Supreme Court he seemed to think unaccred- 
ited by the popular will and almost usurped. He tram- 
pled on the Senate, the dignity of which made it the 
special object of his aversion ; he flouted the judiciary, 
and would have trampled on it if he had dared. Congenial 
to his policy was the doctrine that members of Congress 
were delegates, bound to deliver the mandate of the people 
whose opinions and passions the autocrat could control. 
Whatever was eminent and independent was, in the eyes of 
Jackson, as in those of other demagogic despots, an offence, 
and his instinctive tendency was to level it to the ground. 
This feeling probably entered largely into the war which 
he waged against the National Bank. The Bank, created 
by Hamilton in the interest of central government as well 
as in that of finance, had been abolished by the Jeffersonian 
party whose motive likewise was probably political. But 
another Bank had been founded to meet the financial 
difficulties entailed by the war and restore the soundness 
of the paper currency. The time for the renewal of the 
charter was now not far off, and no opposition was ex- 
pected. The Bank had given the nation a sound currency, 
it had been honourably managed and enjoyed the confi- 
dence of commerce. A Congressional Committee of 
enquiry reported that the government deposits were safe 
in its keeping. Nor does the National Bank appear to 
have meddled with politics, while it seems certain that the 
private banks did. But the suspicion that its political 
influence had been used on the wrong side was breathed 
by its enemies into Jackson's ear, and he, who was totally 
ignorant of finance, inserted words of threatening import 



rv. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 199 

into a message to Congress. Clay, now in fierce opposi- 
tion, unwisely took up the gauntlet in the name of the 
Bank and made the renewal of the charter a political 
issue. In doing this he stood himself on weak ground 
since in his fervidly democratic youth he had taken part 
in the abolition of the former Bank. Jackson welcomed 
the war, which was waged with the utmost fury on both 
sides. He and his staff denounced the Bank as a mono- 
poly, as a money power, as a political engine of the enemies 
of the people, as an ally of the rich against the poor. By 
this time he had no doubt talked himself into a belief that 
all this was true. At length the President directed his 
Secretary of the Treasury, Duane, to remove the govern- 
ment deposits from the Bank, probably against the law ; 
and when that minister refused, he was dismissed, and 
Taney, more compliant and afterwards notorious in another 
way, was put in his room. The renewal of the charter i832. 
was vetoed by the President, and Clay's party not having 
a two-thirds' majority in the Senate to carry the Bill over 
the veto, the Bank fell. The government deposits were 
distributed, not of course without political favouritism, 
amongst State Banks, where they furnished the means and 
stimulus for reckless speculation, notably in the public 
lands. Wild-cat banks multiplied, especially in the ad- 
venturous West, and flooded the countrj'- with their de- 
lusive paper. Alarmed at the inflation Jackson put forth 
an edict that nothing but gold or silver should be taken in 
payment of taxes or other debts to government. The sud- 
denness of the check brought on a crash, and there fol- 
lowed the tremendous financial crisis of 1837, with the 
universal suspension of cash payments, and general wreck 
of commerce and industry ; the suffering falling chiefly, 



200 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

as it always does, on those poorer classes whose champion 
against the plutocratic tyranny of the Bank Jackson 
averred and no doubt believed himself to be. By the 
mouths of Clay and Webster reason, sound finance, and 
justice protested in vain. The popularity of the old hero 
swept away all opposition. His ignorance of finance was 
taken by his masses as a pledge of his probity and good 
sense. On his freedom from personal corruption they 
might with justice rely. Nor was it difficult for him to 
raise a mob against a corporation which could be de- 
nounced as a political and social organ of the money 
power, though as a matter of fact a large proportion of 
the stock was held by people of small incomes or by 
charitable institutions. 

In the course of the struggle Jackson's autocratic notions 
were fully developed. He laid it down that in the inter- 
pretation of the constitution, including those articles of it 
which defined the extent of his own powers, his guide was 
to be his own conscience, an assumption which would have 
put him above law. When the Senate passed a resolution 
of censure on his dictatorial proceedings he took them 
sharply to task for presuming to arraign his conduct, which 
he said they had no right to do except in the form of im- 
peachment. Nor was his revenge slaked till his i)arty hav- 
ing ultimately gained a majority in the Senate under his 
henchman and successor in the Presidency, he made that 
hated assembly taste the cup of humiliation to the dregs 
by the erasure of the resolution from their journal, in mani- 
fest defiance of the article in the constitution which re- 
quires a record of proceedings to be kept. His fury in this 
battle was inflamed by his personal hatred of Clay and 
Calhoun ; of Clay, who had deprived, and as he swore, cor- 



I 



IT. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 201 

niptly defrauded him of the Presidency on the occasion 
when Adams was elected ; of Calhoun, who, as Jackson 
learned from a malicious informant, had as a member of 
Adams' Cabinet condemned his outrages in Florida and 
his execution of Ambrister and Arbuthnot. 

With Calhoun as the representative of South Carolina 
and her unhappy interests Jackson was brought into colli- 
sion in a better cause, and one in which his force of character 
served the Republic well. The protectionist tariff while it 
enriched or was supposed to enrich the manufacturing cities 
of New England, impoverished the South, which manufac- 
tured nothing, and being, like all slave-owning communi- 
ties, poor in the midst of apparent wealth, could ill bear 
the addition of fiscal burdens. South Carolina, the land 
of slavery Hotspurs, rose against the tariff, planted her 
feet on State right, assumed a menacing attitude, and pro- 
ceeded to carry into effect the doctrine laid down by 
Jefferson in his draft of the Kentucky resolutions by a 
nullification of the federal law. Secession and civil war 
seemed imminent, but Jackson proclaimed in tones of 
thunder that the Union must be preserved, and at once 
prepared, if the law was resisted by South Carolina, to 
execute it by arms. He is said even to have threatened 
to hang Calhoun, though he would have found the sum- 
mary execution of a United States senator under the 
shadow of the Capitol a more dangerous operation than 
the summary execution of two helpless Englishmen on a 
lonely strand. The sages of the Senate, with Clay at 
their head, in the end brought about one of those compro- 
mises of which Clay was the grand artificer. A Force Bill, 
which empowered the President to put down resistance in 
South Carolina by arms was coupled in its passage with a 



202 THE UNITED STATES. chai>. 

Bill reducing' the obnoxious tariff. It is doubtful whether 
South Carolina, having extorted this concession, did not 
really come out victorious after all. Webster and others 
thought that she did, and were for bringing her to her 
knees before any concession was made. Jackson's heart 
was with slavery, as on other occasions he plainly showed, 
though above all things he was for the Union. In the case 
of Georgia and the Creek Indians, where the State, in the 
process of improving the Indians off the face of the earth, 
had set at nought a treaty made with them by the federal 
government, Jackson failed to assert the authority of the 
nation. But he probably regarded a treaty with the 
Indians and the claims of the weaker race to justice as 
things of small account. 

The force which never failed Jackson was agfain shown 
with honour and advantage to his country in exacting from 
France the indemnity due for former aggressions on Ameri- 
can commerce which the French Chambers were unwilling 
to pay. A private hint which the French government gave 
him to strengthen its hand in dealing with the Chambers, 
by the use of a little energetic language was taken, as it 
was sure to be, with a vengeance. But neither this service 
nor any firmness which Jackson may have shown in uphold- 
ing the Union against nullification, could make up for the 
terrible and lasting mischief done to public life and charac- 
ter by the ascendancy of such a man, by the spoils system 
which he introduced, by the practices and examples of the 
agents whom he brought forward, by the personal press 
and the machinery of slander which were employed in his 
interests, by the venom which he infused into party con- 
tests, and by his contempt of constitutional right. His 
equestrian statue, prancing in front of the White House, 



IV. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 20.3 

seems to beat down the constitution under its hoofs. Not 
the least among the evils of his reign was the systematic 
corruption of the press. It degraded, as Webster said, the 
press and the government at once. Fifty or sixty editors 
of leading journals, if Webster may be believed, were ap- 
pointed to offices, and the propagation of opinions favour- 
able to the government through the press had, according 
to the same grave authority, become the main administra- 
tive duty. From Jackson and his circle a spirit of vio- 
lence seemed to have gone out over the whole land. 
Rowdyism, rioting, duelling, and lynch law were never so 
rife. Outrages were committed in the streets of Washing- 
ton and if the victim was Jackson's political opponent pro- 
tection was sought in vain. Fraud and violence became 
common in elections. A race in which courage is not 
rare, which has proved its valour in many scenes, surely 
does itself wrong by worshipping mere courage, even when 
allied with strength of will, in such a character as Andrew 
Jackson. 

The Jacksonian era was naturally the era of people- 
worship, and of application to the multitude of language 
applied in the Bible to the Almighty ; as though ignorance 
and passion millions of times multiplied could be divine ; 
as though the will of any man or of any number of men, 
apart from reason and conscience, could constitute right or 
absolve from guilt those who in bowing to it did wrong. 
Jefferson had gone far in this direction, but he had still 
been loyal to public reason, or what he took for it, and had 
not paid slavish homage to mere will. " Mr. President," i832. 
said Webster in his speech on the message sent down by 
Jackson with his veto on the chartering of the Bank, " we 
have arrived at a new epoch. We are entering on experi- 



204 THE UNirEl) STATES. ciiai-. 

merits with the government and the constitution of the 
country hitherto untried and of fearful and appalling 
aspect. This message calls us to the contemplation of a 
future which little resembles the past. Its principles are 
at war with all that public opinion has sustained and all 
which the experience of the government has sanctioned. 
It denies first principles ; it contradicts truths hitherto 
received as indisputable. It denies to the judiciary the 
interpretation of law and demands to divide with Congress 
the origination of statutes. It extends the grasp of execu- 
tive pretension ovei' every power of the government. But 
this is not all. It presents the chief magistrate of the 
Union in the attitude of arguing away the powers of that 
government over which he had been chosen to preside, 
and adopting for this purpose modes of reasoning which 
even under the influence of all proper feeling towards high 
official station, it is difficult to regard as respectable. It 
appeals to every prejudice which may betray men into a 
mistaken view of their own interests, and to every passion 
which may lead them to disobey the impulses of their 
understanding. It urges all the specious topics of State 
rights and national encroachment against that which a 
great majority of the States have affirmed to be rightful 
and in which all of them have acquiesced. It sows, in an 
unsparing manner, the seeds of jealousy and ill-will against 
that government of which its author is the official head. 
It raises a cry that liberty is in danger at the very moment 
when it puts forth claims to powers heretofore unknown 
or unheard of. It affects alarm for the public freedom when 
nothing endangers that freedom so much as its own unpar- 
alleled pretences. This even is not all. It manifestly seeks 
to inflame the poor against the rich, it wantonly attacks 



IV. DEMOCKACY AND SLAVERY. 205 

whole classes of the people for the purpose of turning 
against them the prejudices and reseutments of other 
classes. It is a State paper which finds no topic too excit- 
ing for its use, no passion too inflammable for its address 
and its solicitation. Such is this message. It remains 
now for the people of the United States to choose between 
the principles here avowed and their Government. These 
cannot subsist together. The one or the other must be 
rejected. If the sentiments of the message shall receive 
general approbation the constitution will have perished 
even earlier than the moment which its enemies origfi- 
nally allowed for the termination of its existence. It will 
not have survived to its fiftieth year." In a community so 
full of political life and of self-preserving j^ower as the 
American Republic no man can seriously meditate usurpa- 
tion. But if any man could meditate usurpation he would 
act as Jackson acted; he would stretch his power under 
pretence of asserting popular right ; he would give himself 
out as the embodiment of the popular will ; he would de- 
grade constitutional assemblies and the judiciary ; he would 
ostentatiously appeal from their judgment to that of the 
IDCople ; he would corrupt the public press ; and he would 
stir up the hatred of the poor against the rich. 

Andrew Jackson, however, was able to do what no other 
President has done, he was able to bequeath the succession. 
His devisee was his faithful lieutenant Martin Van Buren. 
Van Buren was presiding over the Senate when Clay 
thundered out an awful warning to the usurping execu- 
tive and rhetorically charged Van Buren to repeat it to 
Jackson. Van Buren listened with an air of simplicit}^ 1834 
as though he were treasuring up every word for repetition 
to the President, and when Clay had finished, left the 



206 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

chair, crossed over to the orator, and asked him for a 
pinch of his famous snuff. Tliis incident depicts the man. 
Van Buren was arch-engineer of the political machine in 
Ms own State, the secret of which he had brought with ■ 
him to Jackson's councils. He was a man of great tact 
and address, and had early recognized in the political sky 
the star of Andrew Jackson. Except under the stress of 
party he was patriotic as well as sagacious, nor was 
he a bad President. But on his head fell the conse- 
quences of his master's dealings with the Bank and 
the deposits. He was overwhelmed by the financial crisis 
of 1837, when commercial ruin and repudiation filled the 
land ; and though the President showed no want of cool- 
ness or resource, nothing could avert the effects of public 
calamity on the reputation of the government and the 
party in power. 

Party lines had now been drawn again. On one side 
was the Democratic party, of which Jackson had been the 
head and which partook of the character of its chief. On 
the other side was the party which by this time had 
assumed the name of Whig, having for its head Clay, 
holding with him for protectionism, expenditure of national 
money on internal improvements, a broad construction of 
the constitution in favour of the central government, and 
a national bank, at the same time maintaining the consti- 
tutional authority of Congress and the judiciary against 
stretches of the executive power such as Jackson had 
essayed. The Democrats were for strict construction, 
State right, and economy. The spirit of the old Federal- 
ists had migrated into the Whig party, that of the Jeffer- 
sonian Republicans into its rival. The Whigs, like the 
Federalists, were stronger in the North than ekewhere. 



IV. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 207 

they had the men of intellect and the most substantial 
farmers on their side, while the Democrats had the 
populace of the great cities. On both sides the poli- 
ticians, whose religion was the Union, would fain have 
kept the question of slavery out of sight, but though 
it might not be made a party issue, to keep it out of 
sight was impossible. State right, the old Democratic 
doctrine, served a new purpose as the bulwark of slav- 
ery against the nation, and " dough faces " or North- 
ern men with Southern principles became eligible as 
candidates. 

A curious current had for a time been running across 
the main stream of party. The catastrophe of a Free- 
mason, named Morgan, who after betraying his intention 
of revealing the secrets of the order had disappeared and 
was supposed to have been murdered, produced an out- 
break of popular fear and wrath against Freemasonry, 
which spreading over a great part of the Union, gave birth 
to the ephemeni party of Anti-Masons. This irregular 1832. 
movement, while it lasted, rent the webs and perplexed 
the souls of the regular politicians, but having its origin 
in a panic it could not last long. 

Van Buren's term at an end, the natural candidate of 1840. 
the Whigs for President was Clay, the head, the author, 
and the pride of their party. But Jackson's success had 
taught the wire-pullers the value of availability. They 
cunningly burked Clay's candidature, while they looked 
around for an available man. An available man they 
found and a counter-charm in all respects to the " Old 
Hero " and " Old Hickory " in " Old Tippecanoe," the 
name which most happily for electioneering purposes they 
gave CO William Harrison, a worthy old country gentle- 



208 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

man in Ohio, who in a combat at Tippecanoe gained a 
victory over the Indians. Harrison was presented to the 
people as equal or superior to Jackson in homeliness and 
simplicity, living in a log cabin garnished with coon skins 
and drinking hard cider. For him the wire-pullers, in 
their own phrase, "set the ball rolling," and gloriously 
it rolled. There ensued a campaign of enthusiasm, almost 
of delirium. Railroads, now extending over the country, 
gave facilities for large gatherings. The whole population 
was excited and set in motion. Men laid aside their 
occupations. Monster meetings were held. At a meeting 
in Ohio where Harrison appeared it was said that a hun- 
dred thousand people were present. Processions five 
miles long chanted " Tippecanoe and Tyler too," Tyler 
being the candidate for the Vice-Presidency. The ball 
which had been set rolling and the emblems of Harrison's 
bucolic virtue, the log cabin and the coon skins, were 
everywhere displayed. Men of intellect like Webster 
stooped to exert their eloquence in a coon skin campaign 
and to drink the health of the Presidential candidate with 
forced enthusiasm in hard cider. The results were a 
complete victory of the Whigs and the ascendancy of 
availability over other qualifications and claims in the 
choice of candidates for the Presidency. It is probable 
however that availability would in any case have ulti- 
mately prevailed. What the Harrisonian frenzy denotes 
in its relation to American character it is not easy to 
say. Had the American people traversed in half a century 
the whole distance between the phlegmatic Englishman 
and the wild shouter for Tippecanoe, or was this strange 
outburst of political poetry a recoil from a too prosaic 
life? 



IV. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 209 

" Tippecanoe " vacated life and the Presidency a month 1841. 
after his inauguration. The cause of his death seems to 
have been the buzzing swarm of office seekers which had 
followed him to Washington as much as an accidental 
malady. Tyler his Vice-President stepped into his place. 
Tyler had been put on the ticket to propitiate the Southern 
wing. By his conduct as President he read his party a 
lesson which Americans have hardly yet laid to heart on 
the expediency of being careful in the selection of a candi- 
date for the second place, and not using that nomination 
as a sop. He turned against his party ; vetoed their pet 
measure, the erection of a national bank ; and tried to form 
a party of his own with a view to re-election, of which 
however he had no chance. His excommunication by the 
party could not deprive him of his veto power. It only 
illustrated the difference between British and American 
forms of government. Had Tyler been a British Piime 
Minister deserted by his party he must have at once fallen. 
A more serious question tlian that of the Bank soon loomed 
up. Houston, an American filibuster and an old comrade 
of Jackson, with a body of intrusive Americans had planted 
himself in Texas, which belonged to the Republic of 
Mexico, and when the Mexicans took arms to put him 
down and recover their province, had defeated them at the 
battle of San Jacinto. He now, probably in pursuance of 1841. 
a scheme preconcerted with Jackson, threw himself into 
the arms of the American Republic, which could not 
receive him without going to war with Mexico, whose 
accession to the sisterhood of freedom had recently been 
the subject of jubilation. The South was for the annexa- 
tion, which opened a vast vista of extension for slavery 
ever hungering not only for new political domains but for 



210 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

fresh fields to till, since slave culture, especially the culture 
of tobacco, was exhausting to the soil. The Northern spirit 
was opposed to annexation for the same reasons. Tyler 
entered with alacrity into the intrigue ; he was ready for 
the annexation of Texas or for anything which could gain 
him re-election. When the time came he was contemptu- 
ously swept aside, but he had opened the question on 
which the election turned and which proved fatal to the 
chief of his enemies. 
1844, Annexation of Texas with slavery behind it was the de- 
cisive issue in the next Presidential campaign between the 
Whigs whose candidate was the brilliant Clay and the 
Democrats whose candidate was the far from brilliant but 
highly available J. K, Polk. Van Buren, to his credit, 
had been laid aside on account of his unwillingness to 
embrace annexation. Each party had still a southern as 
well as a northern wing, but the strength of the Whigs 
lay in the north, that of the Democrats in the south, and 
their respective affinities to freedom and slavery were seen 
through the veil which the politicians laboured to keep 
spread. The Democrats taxed the Whigs with anti-slavery 
leanings, and the Whigs could not retort the reproach. 
Clay, striving to balance himself between annexation and 
opposition to annexation, that he might hold his southern 
without losing his northern wing, fell as the political 
acrobat is apt to fall. His great achievements as a states- 
man were compromises. But as a candidate he found a 
compromise between opposite policies too much for his 
address. A letter in which dallying with annexation he 
used an expression plainer than he intended, set him 
fatally at odds with a third party which would listen to 
no compromise, and which though small was large enough 



IV. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 211 

to turn the scale. This was the Anti-slavery party, or the 
Liberty party, as the political section of the abolitionists 
styled itself, now coming as an organized force upon the 
scene. Naturally these men would have preferred Claj'-, 
who was half with them, to Polk, who ^vas entirely against 
them; but exasperated at Clay's trimming letter, which 
seemed to them a wound received in the house of a friend, 
they left his side and threw away their votes on Birney a 
candidate of their own. Clay thus lost New York and 
the election. Loud were the lamentations which arose 
from all his followers. Even the victors were almost 
ashamed of their victory. The wail has been prolonged 
in history. Unquestionably the election of Polk against 
Clay was the preference of mediocrity to distinction. But 
such is the law of democracies, and after all Clay was a 
dazzling and fascinating but artful politician who owed liis 
fall to a false step in the practice of his own art. Nor was 
his fate unretributive. As the chief of the war-hawks 
he had called forth that military spirit which, embodied in 
Jackson, crossed and ruined his own career. 

Polk as President did that which he had been elected to 1845. 
do. He pushed the quarrel with Mexico, which formed as 
striking an illustration as history can furnish of the quarrel 
between the wolf and the lamb, and which no American 
historian of character mentions without pain. To add the 
disgrace of private covetousness to that of public rapine it 
seems that some of the chief promoters of the aggression 
were speculators in Texan securities. The use of the 
phrase re-annexation instead of annexation, having no 
warrant in fact, did not cover the wrong. Mexico was at 
last pressed and goaded into doing what by a hypocritical 
fiction was pronounced an act of war, and was invaded by 



212 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

an American army. The Mexicans, poorly armed and ill 
commanded as well as people of a weaker race, notwith- 
standing their nnmbers were as sheep to the butcher. 
They were defeated by Generals Taylor and Scott in a 
series of engagements, and the invader marched into their 
capital. That they fought as well as they could against 
over-mastering wrong must always be recorded to their 
honour. It forms a bright spot in the dark and sordid 

1845. pages of their history. The immense expanse of Texas 
was ceded to the conqueror, annexed to the United States 
and re-annexed to slavery, which had been abolished under 
the Mexican constitution. Nor did annexation end there, 

1850. but was extended to New Mexico and Arizona. At the 
same time the golden California was seized against the will 
of its few inhabitants on the pretext, for which there was 
not the slightest foundation, that Great Britain had designs 
upon it. All this was done, be it remembered, by the slave 
power then dominant and its political retainers. Northern 
morality protested, as the readers of the " Biglow Papers " 
know. 

1849. The next President could be no other than Taylor, the 
victorious general of the war, although Taylor neither was 
nor pretended to be anything of a statesman. A tolerably 
shrewd candidate he was, and in this respect Clay might 
have envied his tact. During the canvass he received a 
letter from a planter running thus : — " Sir, I have worked 
hard and been frugal all my life, and the results of my in- 
dustry have mainly taken tlie form of slaves, of whom I own 
about a hundred. Before I vote for President I want to 
see that the candidate I support will not so act as to divest 
me of my property." The general replied : " Sir, I have the 
honour to inform you that I too have been all my life in- 



IV. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 213 

dustiious and frugal, and that the fruits thereof are mainly 
in slaves, of whom I own three hundred." Taylor turned 
out a plain, honest man, not a bigot or henchman of 
slavery, in spite of his three hundred slaves, and showed 
no tendency to play Jackson. He died in the White House 
and his place was taken by Vice-President Fillmore, who i850 
left no mark. The election that followed was the last 
chance of Daniel Webster's ambition, and his desperate 
attempt to grasp it was a sad example of the influence 
of that dazzling prize upon the characters of public men. 
He who had been the stately champion of freedom, of 
liberty of opinion, and of right, now, to attract south- 
ern votes, stood forth as the defender of slavery, of the 
fugitive slave law, and the gag. He derided the anti-slavery 
doctrine as a ghostly abstraction, and descended almost to 
buffoonery in ridiculing the idea of a law higher than that 
which ordained the hunting down of fugitive bondsmen. 
His character, to which friends of freedom in the North had 
long looked up, fell with a crash like that of a mighty tree, 
of a lofty pillar, of a rock that for ages had breasted the 
waves. Some minds willing' to be misled he still drew 
after him, but the best of his friends tui-ned from him 
and his life ended in gloom. 

Mexico was avenged on her spoiler, for the acquisition of 
Texas re-opened the fatal controversy between slavery and 
freedom which the Missouri compromise had put to sleep in 
Congress for thirty years. Texas being large enough to 
make four States, the North was threatened with a formid- 
able extension of the slave power. A proviso was moved 
by Wilmot excluding slavery from Texas. Thereupon a 
desperate struggle began in Congress. Webster and Clay, 
the statesmen and the hierophants of Union, appeared with 



214 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

a parting splendour on the scene of their achievements, 
and Calhoun, a dying man, sat in the Senate while a col- 
league read his last speech. Passion was so fiercely excited 
that a revolver was drawn in the hall of the serene Senate. 
Not Texas only but New Mexico and Arizona which went 
with Texas, and California into which there had been a rush 
of gold-seekers and which urgently demanded political 
organization, seemed to be breaking out, when Clay once 
more came forward as an angel of mediation with a com- 
promise in his hand. Texas was consigned to slavery but 
was left a single State. New Mexico and Arizona were also 
consigned to slavery against which however they were 
practically guarded by nature, being unsuited for slave 
labour. California was admitted as a free State. At the 
same time a fugitive slave law of a more stringent kind was 
passed, a concession vital and fatal to the South. How 
conscience in passing this law struggled Avith policy was 
seen when thirty-three Northern members paired, stayed 
away, or dodged the vote. This was the third and the 
last compromise. 

The Whig party which had striven to keep the slavery 
question out of the political arena and to build its platform 
of such planks as a protective tariff, a national bank, 
internal improvements, the cultivation of national spirit, 
and devotion to the Union, combined with the opposition to 
Jacksonian violence and encroachment, lost the foundation 
of its existence ; in fact it was buried in the grave of Clay, 
to whom in a great measure it owed its life. It faded away 
like a dissolving view, while in its place appeared the linea- 
ments, first of a Free Soil, then of a National Republican, or 
in brief, a Republican party formed on the grand issue and 
destined to try with slavery, first at the ballot and after- 



IV. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 215 

wards on the battlefield, the inevitable question whether the 
country was to be wholly slave or wholly free. 

Slavery was confident and aggressive. After Polk it 1853. 
made Pierce, another of its satellites, President. Under 
Pierce it planned the annexation of Cuba to which it feared 
emancipation, now triumphant in Great Britain and Europe, 
might be extended. Three American ambassadors to 1854. 
European Courts, Buchanan, Mason, and Soul^, met at 
Ostend and put forth a manifesto the effrontery of which 
startled Europe, intimating that Spain must be compelled 
to sell or give up Cuba to the United States. Lopez, a 
filibuster, made an attempt, with the sympathy of the South, 
to seize the island, but perished with his band. Walker, 
another filibuster, also with the sympathy of the South, 
invaded Nicaragua, made himself dictator, and was pre- 
paring to introduce negro slavery, when he also met his 
doom. A revival even of the African slave trade was in 
the air ; a contraband trade in African negroes went on 
upon a large scale with the connivance even of the Federal 
authorities at the South. As Great Britain was now lead- 
ing a crusade against slavery she became the object of diplo- 
matic enmity to the slave-owners who were in power at 
Washington and whose discourtesies, set down to the ac- 
count of the whole American nation, had a bad effect upon 
British opinion at a later day. 

The last act of the struggle between the Jacksonian 
Democrats and the Whigs was complicated by the com- 
mencement of another sudden tornado of opinion sweeping 
like the Anti-Masonism, from an independent quarter across 
the field of the regular parties, and for the moment con- 
fusing their lines. This was the movement of the American 
party, or as it was nicknamed, the party of the Knowno- 



216 THE UNITED STATES. chat. 

things. That they "knew of nothing illegal or disloyal" 
being the regular answer with which they parried curious 
1854. inquiry. The American party was called into transitory ex- 
istence by dislike and dread of the foreign element, now in- 
creasing in volume and influence, and especially of the Irish 
Roman Catholics. The Irish Roman Catholics, always to 
be distinguished from the Scotch-Irish of the Protestant 
North, were now pouring from their famine-stricken country 
into the United States and were fast becoming that dread 
power, the Irish vote, henceforth a serious factor in Ameri- 
can politics, though perhaps from a nervous sense of the 
present situation even historians seem to shrink from the 
mention of its name. These people of a hapless land and a 
sad history, ignorant, superstitious, priest-ridden, nurtured 
in squalid poverty, untrained in constitutional government, 
trained only in conspiracy and insurrection, were a useful 
addition to the labour of their adopted country ; of its poli- 
tics they could only be the bane. Clannish still in their 
instincts, herding clannishly together in the great cities and 
blindly following leaders whom they accepted as chiefs, and 
in choosing whom they were led more by blatant energy than 
by merit, they were soon trained to the pursuit of political 
spoils and filled elections with turbulence, fraud, and corrup- 
tion. Through the connivance of a judiciary elected largely 
by their own votes they were permitted to set the naturaliza- 
tion law at defiance, and fresh from the seat of their native 
wretchedness to assume and misuse the powers of American 
citizens. Their numbers and cohesion soon enabled them to 
influence the balance of parties. But as a body they went 
into the Democratic party and there remained, attracted at 
first perhaps by its name and confirmed in their adherence to 
it as the party of slavery, which it ultimately became, by their 



IV. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 217 

bittsr antipathy to the negro, who might compete with them 
in the hibour market and whose degradation alone saved 
them from being at the bottom of the social scale. Their 
influence could not fail thenceforth to intensify the Anti- 
British sentiment in American politics, and to envenom all 
disputes between America and the mother country. Know- 
nothingism presently passed away, its object being lost in 
the more pressing issue. But the cause of it did not pass 
away. 

Meantime in ways more important than politics, and in 
spite of political factions, the country had been advancing 
with mighty strides. Since the Union the number of the 
States had more than doubled. Population had rapidly 
multiplied and had been swollen by a great immigration, 
not Irish only but German and Scandinavian which sought 
happier homes and brighter prospects than those of the 
peasantry in the old countries of Europe. At the time of 
the Union settlements still clung to the Atlantic seaboard. 
It had now passed the Alleghanies in force, entered the 
valley of the Mississippi, and was turning what had once 
been merely a mental horizon and afterwards a boundary- 
line into a central waterway. At last to the Atlantic the 
Pacific coast, with its sunny shores and half tropical wealth, 
had been added. Humanity had staked out the vast field on 
which the great experiment of democracy was to be tried. 
Intercommunication had been vastly improved by enter- 
prise and invention. The great Cumberland Road had 
opened a broad highway for civilization from Maryland 
across the Alleghanies. Clinton had turned from the fac- 
tions and corrupt politics of New York to the construction 
of the Erie Canal, which in its magnitude rivals and by 
its utility shames the Avorks of the Pharaohs. Steam liad 



218 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

begun to open a new era. Steamboats plied on the water- 
ways and the railway took the place of the crawling stage. 
A railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific was already 
planned. Thus not only were the States of the Union 
bound together and one mind diffused through the whole 
frame, but the appliances of agriculture and civiliza- 
tion were brought, with the march of settlement, into the 
virgin wilderness. The mineral resources of the country 
were being opened. Spinning-jennies and power-looms, the 
inventions of Hargreaves and Arkwright, were imported. 
Manufactures on a large scale had grown ujd in the North- 
eastern States and had superseded the spinning-wheel. 
Civilization moving westward had a ragged edge of roving 
and lawless adventure, at least where it moved from the 
quarter of slavery. With the commercial expansion attend- 
ant on the rapid development of new resources inevitably 
went gambling speculation with its wild-cat banks, frauds, 
bankruptcy, and crashes, the effect however of which was 
limited and transient, commerce like industry rising elastic 
from its fall and wealth with all its accompaniments, moral 
and social as well as material, advancing by leaps and bounds. 
Nor had the distribution of wealth yet ceased to be equal, at 
all events in comparison with its distribution in the old world. 
The last church establishment, that of Connecticut, had 
fallen, and religious equality everywhere reigned. The 
people were still religious ; Christianity generally, and in 
all cases theism, remained the basis and sanction of their 
morality. But orthodoxy was giving way and philosophy 
was gaininor ground. Emerson had come out of the church 
and was teaching morality without a creed. Religion with- 
out a creed found an eloquent preacher in Theodore Parker. 
In tlie ferment of progress Utopian schemes of society be- 



f 



IV. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. 219 

gan to abound. Some of the social Utopias, as that of the 
Shakers and that of the Perfectionists, took a religious 
form, and Revivalism made its wild protest in favour of 
the spiritual interests of man. 

Intelligence was mainly engrossed by the pursuit of 
wealth, practical science and invention were active, while of 
literature there was as yet but little, and that little was not 
native in character but European. Denial of copyright to 
English writers, by causing their works to be pirated and 
sold in cheap editions, discouraged American authorship 
and thus kept American intellect in thraldom to Europe. 
An international copyright law would have done more to 
emancipate from British influence than any war with Great 
Britain. 

Oratory, both political and forensic, on the other hand 
had been carried to a high point, and if in the hot and ex- 
citable youth of the nation it was often bombastic, some- 
times, as in Webster and Choate, it was not. The national 
debates on slavery and other momentous questions stimu- 
lated eloquence among the leaders and habits of poli- 
tical thought among the people. The political press drew 
to it a large share of ability and had become a great 
power ; with power, irresponsible so long as the circulation 
can be sustained, came the inherent danger of abuse. 

Political democracy was now full grown in the Northern 
States and at Washington, so far as the Northern spirit pre- 
vailed there ; all officers were elective, all office-holders were 
in the fullest sense servants of the people, every man's 
tenure was precarious and dependent on popular favour, 
rotation in office was the rule. Even the judiciary had 
become elective in most of the States. To the people and 
its will everybody had bowed, as once everybody had bowed 



220 THE UNITED STATES. chap. iv. 

to royalty and to the will of kings. Property qualification 
for the franchise had generally disappeared. Manhood suf- 
frage was the rule. With the good of the system came its 
inevitable evil, the machinery of party and electioneering, 
demagogic arts and strategy, factions, passion, and vitu- 
peration, the reign of the caucus and the boss, and where the 
foreign element, especially the Irish, prevailed, ballot-stuff- 
ing, repeating, rioting, and corruption. Only in the slave- 
owning South oligarchy still held power. Social democracy 
also was in outward forms and manners complete ; in sub- 
stance it was much more advanced than it was in the old 
world, though nothing could efface the social lines drawn by 
wealth and personal superiority. Labour and lowly birth 
instead of being a disparagement were a boast and a title 
to political preferment. A nation which had been at school 
and which read paid a homage to intellect perhaps greater 
than that which it paid to commercial success. 



I 



CHAPTER V. 

RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

rpHE question of slavery, in spite of all the attempts to 
elbow it out of politics and prevent it from breaking 
the beloved Union, had now forced itself to the front, and 
the "irrepressible conflict " was at hand. 

Slavery is dead, and the Southerners would not revive it 
if they could. They have wisely accepted its abolition, as 
they have magnanimously accepted defeat by the greater 
power. Denouncing it now seems like trampling on a 
grave. It was the offspring of soil and climate rather 
than of character, though morally it was more alien to 
republican and Puritan New England than to Anglican 
and monarchical Virginia, while by the Quaker of Phila- 
delphia it was always condemned. But its extinction was 
entirely to be desired. Ancient slavery may have been a 
step forward in evolution. In the age of tribal wars it 
was an improvement on extermination. It ended in 
emancipation, and ultimately in the fusion of the races. 
But American slavery was not a step forward in evo- 
lution ; it was a long step backwards ; it was a winter 
fallen into the lap of spring. Its sole source was the 
desire of Europeans in a languid climate to have the 
work done for them instead of doing it themselves. 
Fusion in the case of negro slavery was fatally precluded 



222 THE UNITED STATES. ciiai- 

by colour. There could be no intermingling except that 
which arose from the abuse of the negro woman by her 
white master. Emancipation was greatly discouraged. 
The emancipated slave was a suspected pariah. He was 
trampled on more than a slave, because in him the race of 
the bondsman seemed to pretend to equality. To talk 
of the system as gradually elevating the negro was idle 
when permanent marriage and domestic ties, the first 
elements of moral civilization, were denied him, when it 
was penal to teach him to read and write, when the 
chance of raising himself above the coarsest manual labour, 
even by petty trades, was withheld. Not less idle was 
the pretence of making him a Christian, which the South- 
ern clergy, religious henchmen of the system, were fain 
to put forward. How make a man a Christian without 
the domestic morality and affections essential to the for- 
mation of a Christian character, and when Christianity in 
his master was always presenting itself to him as a religion 
of wrong? Calhoun brought himself to believe that the 
Southern family was superior to the Northern family as 
having a third relation, that of master and slave, in addi- 
tion to those of husband and wife, parent and child. But 
what became of the family of the negro? Household 
slavery, no doubt, was often, perhaps generally, mild ; but 
the cruelty of plantation slavery, at least on the large 
plantations, is too well proved. The negro there was 
abandoned to the driver, a man of a low and generally 
disreputable class, whose sole object was to raise the 
largest crop of cotton, and who used up the slave like 
a beast of burden. Not only was the plantation slave 
overworked and tortured with the lash, he was sometimes 
murdered, and with impuiuty, as negro evidence was not 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 223 

admitted against whites. If the slave was happy, why 
those fetters, those bloodhounds, that hideous slave code? 
If he was contented, why those laws forbidding him to 
hold meetings, to move freely about, rendering him liable 
to summary arrest and to scourging if he was found wan- 
dering without a master ? Why was Southern legislation 
a code of terror? The Southerners and their wives lived 
in constant dread of slave insurrection. They took every 
alarm as an announcement of it. At Charleston, though 
summer evenings were sweet, the city was shut up early 
and handed over to the patrol. This is the answer to 
Calhoun's boast that slavery excluded angry and dan- 
gerous questions between the employer and the employed. 
Most revolting, if not most cruel of all, were the auction, 
at which husband and wife, parent and child, were sold 
apart, the sight of droves of human cattle on their way to it, 
and the advertisements of human flesh, especially of girls 
nearly white. Negro quarters on a plantation were 
hovels ; the negro's clothes were rags ; his food was 
coarse ; his life was foul. That he was happier than he 
would have been in his African hamlet was more easily 
asserted than proved. His happiness at best was that of 
swine. In his African hamlet, too, he had the chance, if 
he had any capacity, of one day rising in the scale of civili- 
zation. Against the negro in America the gate of the 
future was inexorably barred. The general effect upon 
the character of the slave-owner could not be doubtful. 
Brave, frank, hospitable, free-handed, courteous to his 
equals, a first-rate rider and sportsman he might be ; his 
wife might be soft, elegant, and charming, though there 
was an element in her character of a different kind, which 
civil war disclosed : but it is no£ in the exercise of 



224 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

domestic despotism, with passion and language unre- 
strained, amidst whips, manacles, and blood hounds, that 
the character of a true gentleman can be formed. The 
temper of the boys was spoiled and their minds were 
tainted by familiarity with slaves. With slavery always 
goes lust. The number of half-breeds was large. White 
fathers might even sell their half-breed children as slaves, 
and a Southern lady was heard to complain that she was 
but the head of a harem. If, as some desperate advocates 
of slavery contended, the negro was not a man, what were 
all those half-breeds to be called? The great planters 
were prodigal, many of them were in debt, and in their 
mansions luxury and ostentation, rather than comfort, 
reigned. The table was profusely spread; there was a 
number of servants in livery, but broken windows re- 
mained unmended, and doors would not shut. The num- 
ber, however, of the owners of many slaves was small, that 
of the owners of any slaves not very large, compared 
with that of the " mean whites," who, disdaining industry 
as the lot of the slave, and full of insensate pride of colour, 
though the very negroes despised them, lived a half vaga- 
bond life as parasites of the slave system, farming but 
little and very poorly, slave-driving, slave-hunting, loung- 
ing and drinking, sponging on the great planters, whose 
dependents, socially and politically, they were. Nothing 
is better attested than the inferiority of Southern to North- 
ern life in comfort, thrift, cleanliness, and all the elements 
of civilization. Slavery at Athens and Rome had supported 
an intellectual community. In the slave States of America 
there was no literature or science. Culture was confined 
to a few of the richest men. There was not mechan- 
ical invention. The inventor of the cotton-gin himself was 



V. EUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 225 

a native of Massachusetts. Poor were the universities, 
and the schools were poorer stilL Young Southern gentle- 
men were sent to the universities of the North. Some 
jurists were produced by the practical need of law. The 
clergy were not only inferior in education but degraded 
by the necessity of cringing to slavery, and of perverting 
Scripture and paltering with conscience in that interest. 
What sort of pastor was that Methodist clergyman of 
Tennessee, who, when a negro had been burned alive, 
defended the act in print as one of necessary self-defence, 
avowed that he should have been glad to take part, and 
expressed his wish that, instead of being merely burned, 
the victim had been torn with red-hot pincers and his 
limbs cut off one by one ? Politics were an oligarchy of 
planters, the single aim of whose statesmanship was exten- 
sion and perpetuation of slavery. Nor was the economical 
aspect of the system better than the rest. Slave labour was 
unwilling, stupid, and sluggish ; it lacked intelligence for 
variety of production and unvaried crops exhausted the soil. 
In Virginia, old tobacco fields were covered by forests 
of pine. Larger crops of cotton have been raised by free 
labour under all the disadvantages of recent emancipation. 
The slave, having no interest in thrift, was wasteful. 
The ownership of infancy and decrepitude was unprofit- 
able. High industries, being socially and politically an- 
tagonistic, as well as economically alien to the system, 
could flourish only in a few of the larger cities. On the eve 
of Secession, Mr. Olmsted, a very fair-minded inquirer, made 
a tour of observation through the South. His " Cotton 
Kingdom " depicts general barbarism thinly veiled and 
barely relieved by a few seats of commerce or mansions of 
private wealth. In the house of civilization are many man- 



226 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

sions, and very peculiar institutions may serve humanity 
in their way, but in no way could humanity be served by 
American slavery. On the other hand, American slavery 
threatened humanity with aggression. Hunger of land 
as well as craving for political power and the needed bar- 
riers against the advance of emancipation drove it on. 
It had shown its tendencies in buccaneering attacks on 
South American republics and on Cuba, as well as in the 
conquest of Texas. It had its eye on the West Indies 
and Hayti. It was looking to the reopening of the slave 
trade, which would have brought it into collision with 
Great Britain as an emancipating power. In the absence 
of the slave trade, the demand for more negroes, bred by 
the increasing value of cotton, was met by the conver- 
sion of Virginia, which had exhausted much of its 
own land, into a breeding State, a shameful end for 
the mother of Presidents and the Old Dominion. The 
plea put into the mouth of a good slave owner no doubt 
has force ; he might feel that he was doing his duty to 
his slaves ; he might complacently contrast his peaceful 
household with the labour wars of the North, his gentle 
wife and daughters with its female agitators, his politi- 
cal calm with its democratic turmoil. But for the system, 
the only valid apology was the supreme difficulty of say- 
ing in what relation other than slavery the two races 
brought together under an evil star, and, as it seemed, 
radically unequal in capacity, could be placed towards 
each other. That problem has hardly yet been solved. 

Could that knot have been untied instead of being cut 
by the sword of civil war? Only, it would seem, by 
peaceful separation. Compensated emancipation, like that 
which freed the slaves in the West Indies, would have 



t 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 227 

cost but a fraction of the price which in the end was paid. 
But the slave-owner, even if he would have sold his slaves, 
would hardly have sold his pride or his power. Nor, the 
white dominating at the South, and swaying by his com- 
pact force the jDolicy of the Union, would there have been 
strong security against the practical re-enslavement of the 
negro. Such changes can hardly be brought about peace- 
fully by anything but superior power, such as that of the 
British Parliament, which emancipated the slaves in the 
West Indies, or that of an autocracy such as emancipated 
the serfs in Russia. We cannot say what might have 
happened had the colonies not parted violently from the 
mother country. They might have gone with her in 
emancipation. They might have fallen into two groups, 
one free, the other slave ; and in that case freedom, by 
its moral and industrial superiority might have ultimately 
prevailed. 

The philosophic abolitionism of Jefferson and his com- 
peers had long since died out. It grew faint after the in- 
vention of the cotton-gin, which made cotton the immensely 
profitable staple of the South, and it received its death 
stroke in the slave insurrection of 1832. Nothing was 
left of it but a colonization society for transporting free 
negroes to Africa, and there forming them into a com- 
munity to be the germ of a negro civilization. But this 
was at best a plan for ladling out the sea, and was sus- 
pected by abolitionists of being a scheme for getting rid of 
black citizens. Slavery was now dominant in the United 
States. It elected the Presidents, it filled the offices, it 
swayed the Senate, it cowed the House of Representatives 
and the nation generally by threats of breaking up the 
Union, the idol of an American heart. Its leaders in 



228 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

Congress were in their way statesmen, holding their seats, 
unlike the representatives of popular constituencies, by a 
sure tenure, devoted through life to politics, accustomed 
to command. It held the Northern merchants by the bonds 
of a vast commercial interest and a great debt due to them 
as providers of its capital. A New York trader would tell 
abolitionists plainly that he knew as well as they did that 
slavery was wrong, but New York commerce was bound up 
with it, and abolitionists must be put down. Over the 
mercantile society of the North, especially over its wealthy 
chiefs, the South threw the unfailing spell of aristocracy. 
The Irishman was the faithful liegeman of the political 
power which enabled him to keep his foot on the neck of 
the negro, and O'Connell's denunciations of slavery were 
forgotten or disregarded. The genius of Roman Catholi- 
cism and of High Church Anglicanism, was, to say the 
least, not intolerant of slavery. The Protestant churches 
were fearful of a rupture with their Southern wings. 
Their clergy, moreover, had commercial pewholders and 
trustees. All, or almost all of them, in proclaiming the 
wrath of heaven against sins, left out one fashionable sin ; 
all, or almost all of them, preached submission to the law. 
Submission to the law, in fact, seemed a paramount duty to 
the mass of a law-abiding people ; the people were in their 
consciences persuaded that they were indefeasibly bound 
by the covenant made with slavery in the constitution. 
Popular literature bowed to the yoke, and even missionary 
works were expurgated in deference to slavery. Foreign 
lights of freedom and philanthropy, brought into this 
atmosphere, burned dim. Kossuth, when he visited the 
United States, excused himself from touching the question 
as it was not one of national independence, and Father 



I 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 229 

Mathevv could not remember that he had signed an anti- 
slavery manifesto. The slave owner was master of opinion 
as well as of Congress. 

Still there were protests. There were political protests 
against the aggrandizement of the slave power. Opposition 
had been made on that ground to the acquisition of Texas, 
and a compromise had been enforced. There had been a 
series of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the federal 
District of Columbia, over which Congress had undoubted 
power. The Southerners in Congress had tried to impose 
the gag by decreeing that no petition relating to slavery 
should be received. This called forth a doughty champion 
of the right of petition in the person of Quincy Adams, 
who when he had failed at the election for the Presidency, 
instead of returning to ex-presidential nullity, went into 
the House of Representatives, and there, without avowing 
himself an abolitionist, waged a long and memorable war 
against the gag. One day the old man announced that he 
held in his hand a petition signed by slaves. A tornado of 
Southern wrath ensued. Waiting till it was S23ent Adams 
announced that the petition was in favour of slavery. Sew- 
ard's brilliant star now glittered in the anti-slavery quarter 
above the political horizon. By him were uttered the fate- 
ful words, "irrepressible conflict." Sumner, a senator from 
Massachusetts, stood forth as an open and passionate enemy 
not only of slavery, but of the slave-owners. Chase, Ham- 
ilton Fish, Wade, and Foot were strenuous on the same 
side. The slave trade in Columbia at least had been 
stopped, and the droves no longer passed by the portals of 
the Capitol of liberty. 

Nor were morality and religion mute though their voices 
were low. Emerson assailed slavery with philosophy, the 



230 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

author of the " Biglow Papers " with ridicule. Channing 
pronounced on it a condemnation measured and wary, 
going, however, so far as to say that, rather than give up 
Texas to it he would see the Union repealed. Theodore 
Parker denounced it more fearlessly, and his sermon on the 
death of Webster, the great apostate, is the flower of anti- 
slavery eloquence. Even in the orthodox churches there 
were searchings of heart and as to the lawfulness of slave- 
holding, which in one case brought on schism between the 
Northern and Southern wings. Nor could the Christian 
doctrine of brotherhood be preached without pricking con- 
science on the forbidden theme. Mrs. Beecher Stowe by 
her " Uncle Tom's Cabin," which swept Europe as well as 
America, did as much for the anti-slavery cause as could be 
done for any cause by a work of fiction, which everybody 
reads with a feeling of its unreality. But slavery had more 
ardent and uncompromising foes. Lundy, a mechanic, who 
had lived on one of the highways of the home slave trade, 
and had seen the coffles go by, went forth on a humble cru- 
sade, lecturing even in a Southern State, where his gentle- 
ness seems to have been his protection, and afterwards 
publishing a little anti-slavery journal. He was presently 
joined by William Lloyd Garrison, a young journalist of 
T)romise, who devoted his life to the cause. At Baltimore, 
a port of the slave trade. Garrison denounced in his journal 
a New England merchant who, false to New England prin- 
ciple, was lending his ship to the trade. He was convicted 
of libel and suffered imprisonment, which he underwent 
with a light heart, drawing from it fresh devotion. In 
face of an adverse world he brought out The Liberator^ an 
anti-slavery journal on the humblest scale, at Boston, print- 
ing as well as writing it with his own hands, and living in 



Y. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 231 

apostolic poverty, in the meanest lodging on the scantiest 
fare. For thirty-five years he continued this work. It 
brought him no money but it brought him disciples. His 
doctrine was thorough-going. He denounced slavery not 
only as an evil but as a crime and the sum of all crimes. 
He was for nothing less than immediate, unconditional, 
and uncompensated abolition, so that between him and the 
slave-owner there was internecine war. At the North, if 
there was not slavery, there was prejudice of colour the 
most intense. The negro was worse than servile, he was 
unclean. No white would eat with him, share a public 
conveyance with him, kneel beside him in church. Fellow- 
ship with him would have been social ruin, intermarriage 
as bad as incest. The slightest taint of negro blood was 
hopeless degradation. On this prejudice Garrison trampled, 
openly consorting with blacks, and carrying about with 
him as his fellow crusader, the eloquent Douglas. Frankly 
acknowledging that the constitution established slavery, he 
blasphemed that idol, calling it an agreement with hell and 
a covenant with death, and at last publicly burned it before 
a multitude on the fourth of July. One stormy night, in a 
back street of Boston where negroes dwelt. Garrison, with 
eleven friends, founded the first anti-slavery society, which 
presently became the mother of hundreds, the cause find- 
ing its way to the hearts of simple people who did not hold 
Southern securities and were not politicians. Wendell 
Phillips, a scion of Boston aristocracy, the finest platform 
speaker of his day, joined the movement and became the 
most fiery of its champions. His language, that of The 
Liberator^ and of the abolitionists generally, was cutting, 
not unfrequently too cutting, and was fiercely resented. 
The South boiled with fury, threatened the agitators with 



232 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

personal vengeance, rifled the mails which contained their 
tracts. Commercial interest, political timidity, and colour 
feeling at the North, responded to the angry call of the 
South. Abolitionists were mobbed and insulted, they were 
dragged before magistrates who knew no justice, their 
meetings were broken up, one of their halls was burned, 
one of them, defending himself and his party, was slain. 
A school which a lady had opened for negro girls was 
broken up, and she was driven away with insult ; and this 
in moral and orderly Connecticut. Garrison himself was 
assailed at Boston by a mob of " highly respectable citi- 
zens," dragged through the streets with a rope round him, 
and found shelter from worse violence only in a gaol. 
Public exasperation had been inflamed to the utmost by 
the importation of Thompson, a famous anti-slavery lec- 
turer from England, whose country was unbeloved, and 
whose interference was taken as an affront to the nation. 
Abolition societies nevertheless multiplied. They multi- 
plied notwithstanding divisions in their camp, contests for 
leadership, the extravagances of wild enthusiasts who had 
fastened themselves on the cause, and the identification 
of the movement by its leader with other movements of 
which an era teeming with change was full, but to which 
it had no relation, such as opposition to bibliolatry or Sab- 
batarianism, and theories of government, or rather of spirit- 
ual emancipation from temporal government, which, in the 
world as it was, must have led to despotism or anarchy. 
Garrison's sole aim was to awaken the conscience of the 
people. Political action and even the use of the suffrage 
he renounced, dreading nothing so much as that his cru- 
sade should become a political part}^ with party ambition 
and venality. There was another abolitionist movement 



\. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 233 

led by Birney, a man of admirable character, a slave owner 
who had freed his own slaves, and underwent much perse- 
cution for the cause. This movement was political. It 
sought, hopelessly enough, the abolition of slavery by con- 
stitutional action, and its vote in a New York election had 
taken the Presidency from the waverer Clay. 

The North generally, though not true to morality on the 
subject of slavery, remained true to the principles of a 
republican constitution. It resented the interference with 
the right of petition, it resented the aggression on the 
freedom of speech and of the press. The Southern slave 
was far away ; his wail hardly reached the Northern ear. 
But when, under the new fugitive slave law, the Northern 
people saw with their own eyes the slave-hunter plying his 
trade in their cities, and beheld innocent men and women 
dragged from their asylum and borne off to chains, when 
they witnessed tragic, and sometimes murderous struggles 
between the negro and his captor, their hearts were moved. 
When the negro Anthony Burns was carried off from 
Boston, the hearth of freedom, there was an uprising of 
the citizens. A life was lost in the fray. It was necessary 
to call out troops, and the slave was led away with great 
military parade amidst the execrations of the multitude 
and along streets hung with black. The love of excite- 
ment blending with philanthropy, an " underground rail- 
way " was organized to forward slaves to Canada where 
they were safe under the British flag. Some of the States 
passed Liberty Bills, giving those claimed as slaves secu- 
rities for justice which the fugitive slave law denied them ; 
and these were treated by the South, not without some 
reason, as breaches of the constitution and acts of dis- 
union. To the mine thus charged, the match was applied 



234 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

by Stephen Douglas, a Western politician, and the type of 
his class. He was about the first notable instance of the 
power of voice in politics, which the increasing size of 
audiences has enhanced, and is still enhancing. His force 
as a speaker contrasted with the smallness of his stature 
caused him to be nicknamed " The Little Giant." His 
eloquence was of the most Boanergic kind. In the midst 
of his thundering, says an eye-witness, to save himself from 
choking, he stripped off and cast away his cravat, unbut- 
toned his waistcoat, and had the air and aspect of a half- 
naked pugilist. He was able, prompt, and unscrupulous 
in debate. It occurred to him tliat the quiver of the Demo- 
cratic party, to which he belonged, was spent. To replenish 
it he invented or revived the doctrine of squatter sover- 
eignty, according to which the settlers in any Territory 
were to decide for themselves in framing their constitution 
whether they would admit slavery or not. This upset the 
Missouri compromise, geographical compromise altogether, 
and its tendency was to make slavery national instead of sec- 
tional. The principle of squatter sovereignty was presently 
applied on the motion of Douglas by the Kansas-Nebraska 

1854. Act to the Territory of Kansas, a portion of the Louisi- 
ana purchase. As if in concert with Douglas's move, 
Taney, who had been rewarded for his service to Andrew 
Jackson in the destruction of the bank, with the chief jus- 
ticeship of the Supreme Court, went out of his way in the 

1857. case of a claim to liberty on the part of a negro, Dred 
Scott, which came before him, to rule that Congress had no 
right to prohibit slavery in the Territories, and that the 
Missouri compromise was unconstitutional. At the same 
time, he laid it down that the negro was not included by 
the framers of the constitution in the designation of " man " 



V. RUPTUEE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 235 

or as having any rights against the white, though it appeared 
that at the time when tlie constitution was framed, some 
freed negroes were enjoying civil rights in Massachusetts, 
and had been in arms for colonial freedom. The Chief Jus- 
tice did not say whether if the negro had no rights against 
the white man, the white man had any rights against the 
negro, or whether the negro was morally at liberty to kill 
or rob the white man. By this presentation of the ini- 
quity, naked and in its most repulsive form, Taney did no 
small harm to the party which he intended to aid. It has 
been said that slavery plucked ruin on its own head by its 
aggressive violence. It could not help showing its native 
temper, nor could it help feeding its hunger of land, 
insisting on the restoration of its runaways, or demanding 
a foreign policy such as would fend off the approach of 
emancipation. But Taney's judgment was a gratuitous 
aggression and an insult to humanity at the same time, for 
which, supposing that the Southern leaders inspired it, 
they paid dear. If the slave was mere property, his owner 
might be entitled to take him anywhere, and thus slavery 
might be made national. The boast of a daring partisan 
of slavery might be fulfilled, that the day would come 
when men might be bought and sold in Boston as freely 
as any other goods. The issue, which all the politicians 
had striven to keep out of sight, was presented in its most 
startling: and shocking form. 

The Kansas-Nebraska Act having passed, Kansas be- 
came the prize and theatre of a struggle between slavery 
and the Free Soilers, which was the prelude of civil war. 
From tho adjoining slave State of Missouri, the vanguard 
of slavery came in to occupy the ground ; but it was soon 
encountered by Free Soil men, who poured in from the 



236 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

Northern States under the auspices of the abolition socie- 
ties, and well armed b}^ them with Sharp's rifles, even the 
clergy being carried away by the moral movement and 
going so far as to open their churches to meetings for the 
purpose. In the not unbloody conflict which followed, 
the use of the rifle, the bowie-knife, and the torch, was 
curiously combined with that of political trickery under con- 
stitutional forms, the American citizen preserving in the 
hurly of the fight his formal respect for public law. The 
slavery men outran their opponents in fraudulently fram- 
ing a constitution with slavery, called the Lecompton 
constitution, the acceptance of which was pressed on Con- 
gress by a pro-slavery President. The Free Soilers framed 
a constitution without slavery at Topeka. Victory in the 
end remained with the Free Soilers, while the slavery men 
from Missouri were mere raiders. Nature, too, through 
the soil and climate, had laid her ban upon slavery in 
Kansas. 

In Congress meantime the heat was extreme ; debate 
was always on the verge of violence. Members went to 
the Capitol armed. Sumner having made a speech some- 
what more than scathing and extremely personal, on what 
he called the crime against Kansas, Brooks, a Southern 
fire-eater, was so stung that under the sacred roof of the 
Senate he fell on Sumner and beat him within an inch of 
his life. The North thrilled with indignation. The 
South applauded, and presented Brooks with a compli- 
mentary cane. 

The political hosts, the Free Soil, or as it presently called 
itself, the Republican party on one side, and that of 
slavery and its friends, styled Democratic, on the other, 
were now drawn out for battle. The Democrats still 



V. RUPTUEE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 237 

bore on their banner the old Jeffersonian motto of State 
right, opposed to federal centralization. But State right 
had now come to mean the safeguard of slavery against 
national interference. In the period of flux during the 
process of formation, the Knownothing party acquired a 
momentary accession of strength by giving refuge to old 
Whigs who shrank from abolition. But this was soon 
over, and Knownothingism left the scene. At the next 
presidential election, the Republicans put up Fremont, 
who was available as the Path Finder, having distin- 
guished himself in California as an adventurous explorer 
and a pioneer. They were beaten, and Buchanan, one of 1856. 
the framers of the Ostend manifesto, became the last 
slavery President. But the Republicans showed a strength 
which was an earnest of future victory. 

John Brown, a zealot of the Covenanting or Crom- 
wellian stamp, had fought against slavery in Kansas ruth- 
lessly, perhaps more than ruthlessly, though some Mis- 
sourian ruffians instead of shooting, he forced at the point 
of the rifle for the first time probably in their lives, to 
kneel and pray. One of Brown's sons was shot by a cleri- 
cal champion of slavery from Missouri. Exalted by his 
anti-slavery enthusiasm almost to the pitch of madness, he 
afterwards entered Virginia with two sons and a small 
band, seized Harper's Ferry, where there was a Federal i859, 
arsenal, and called the slaves to freedom. No slaves 
answered his call. He was soon surrounded, with his 
party ; his two sons were shot, and he, fighting with 
the coolest intrepidity, was wounded and overpowered. He 
was hanged with military parade and met his fate with 
more than martyr calmness and courage. His bearing 
impressed his enemies. The consolations of religion ten- 



238 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

dered him by a pro-slavery clergyman, he declined, remem- 
bering perhaps the clerical filibuster in Kansas. Virginia 
was filled with panic and rage. At the North there was 
much sympathy for John Brown, disguising itself under 
faint disapprobation. In the war which ensued, his figure 
was glorified, and his soul, marching on in the battle hymn, 
led the hosts of emancipation against the slave power. 

In 1861 came the catastrophe. By this time the spirit 
of secession was rife among the leaders of the South. 
On the nomination of Presidential candidates the Demo- 
cratic party split. The thorough-going adherents of 
slavery nominated Breckinridge, the party of the union 
with slavery including the majority of the Northern Demo- 
crats, nominated Stephen Douglas. A third section, styl- 
ing itself Constitutional, and vainly hoping to shut out the 
question of slavery and save the constitution, nominated 
Bell for President and for Vice-President Everett, the 
model orator, who at this crisis essayed to pour oil on 
the raging waters by going round and lecturing on the 
character of Washington. 

The Republican convention was held at Chicago, and 
moral as was the cause in which it met, there was the 
usual display of electioneering arts, the usual bargaining, 
and the usual uproar. Seward was the most eminent 
man of the party and its natural candidate. For that 
very reason he was set aside, eminence being always 
dogged by rivalries and jealousies. The choice fell on 
Abraham Lincoln, a man whose eminence was not yet 
such as to give umbrage, a citizen of the powerful State 
in which the convention was held, and available as 
a rail-splitter. Rails said to have been made by him 
were carried about the convention. Abraham Lincoln is 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 239 

assuredly one of the marvels of history. No land but 
America has produced his like. This destined chief of 
a nation in its most perilous hour was the son of a thrift- 
less and wandering settler, bred in the most sordid poverty. 
He had received only the rudiments of education, and 
though he afterwards read eagerly such works as were 
within his reach, it is wonderful that he should have 
attained as a speaker and writer a mastery of language, 
and a pure as well as effective style. He could look back 
smiling on the day when his long shanks appeared bare 
below the shrunken leather breeches which were his only 
nether garment. His frame was gaunt and grotesque but 
mighty. He stood six feet four, and was said to have 
lifted a cask full of beer and to have drunk out of the 
bunghole. This made him a hero with the Clary Grove 
boys. He had a strong and eminently fair understanding, 
with great powers of patient thought which he cultivated 
by the study of Euclid. In all his views there was a 
simplicity which had its source in the simplicity of his 
character. His local popularity was due largely to his 
humour, and the stock of good stories, always pointed, 
though not always delicate, which through life it was his 
delight to collect and repeat. At the same time he was 
melancholy, touched with the pathos of human life, fond 
of mournful poetry, religious though not orthodox, with a 
strong sense of an overruling Providence which when he 
was out of spirits sometimes took the shape of fatalism. 
His melancholy was probably deepened by his gloomy 
surroundings and by misadventures in love. Like his 
father he was without habits of settled industry. He tried 
boating, he tried store-keeping, he tried surveying, he 
tried soldiering in an Indian war, though he never came 



240 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

under fire. At last he became a lawyer, or rather an 
advocate. This suited him better and he pleaded success- 
fully in rude courts. But for his roving spirit politics 
was the trade. Those who knew him best thought him 
intensely ambitious, and he was probably the more dis- 
posed to public life, when his domestic happiness had 
been marred by marriage with a woman, his love of whom 
was so doubtful that he once shirked the wedding, after 
losing by death a woman whom he certainly loved. He 
was elected, one of a group called " the long nine," to the 
Legislature of his State. As a politician he played the 
game ; he jumj^ed out of window to break a quorum, and 
conspired in wrecking a hostile journal by the furtive 
insertion of a ruinous editorial. Still his character was at 
bottom thoroughly sound. Both as an advocate and as 
a politician he was "honest Abe." As an advocate he 
would throw up his brief when he knew that his case was 
bad. He equipped himself for politics by a careful study 
of constitutional law, while from his early life he drew an 
inestimable knowledge of the minds and hearts of those 
whom he called the plain people. The sight of slavery in 
his early wanderings, and still more perhaps the natural 
love of justice which was strong in him, had made him a 
Free Soiler. But his abolitionism was temperate. In op- 
posing slavery he never reviled the slave-owners, nor was 
he blind to the inferiority of the negro. He held the 
negro to be the white man's equal only in certain inalien- 
able rights, in the right, above all, to eat the bread which 
his own hands had earned. He had been made known to 
fame by a series of platform tournaments with the redoubt- 
able Stephen Douglas, in which his powers of reasoning 
fairly as well as closely, and of telling statement, were 



V. KUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 241 

displayed. In one of his speeches he had uttered words 
not less memorable than Seward's " irrepressible conflict." 
" A house," he said, " divided against itself cannot stand. 
I believe this government cannot endure permanently half 
slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be 
dissolved ; I do not expect the house to fall ; but I 
do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become 
all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of 
slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it 
where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in 
course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it 
forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, 
old as well as new. North as well as South." After his 
campaign in Illinois, he had been brought to speak at New 
York, and, in spite of his ungainly figure and quaint 
costume, had made a deep impression. But it was mainly 
to cabal against Seward that Lincoln owed the Republican 
nomination. He was elected President after a campaign of i860, 
intense excitement, commerce struggling hard to escape 
from the yawning gulf by the election of Douglas as a con- 
servative. But the votes cast for him fell short by a million 
of those cast for Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell together, 
and his support came almost entirely from the North. 

There could be no mistake about the significance of the 
election by Northern votes of a President who looked for- 
ward to seeing slavery " put where the people would be 
satisfied that it was in course of ultimate extinction." As 
a Southern Senator said. Republicans did not mean to cut 
down the tree of slavery, but they meant to gird it about 
and make it die. Southern fire-eaters welcomed the event. 
From South Carolina, the centre of slavery, went, up the ^^^• 
signal rocket of Secession amidst transports of enthusiasm, 1860. 

O 



242 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

which the women frantically shared, unconscious of the 
coming doom. It was answered in rapid succession by the 
18G1. other States of the group, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, 
Texas, and Georgia, though in Georgia not without a 
strong spasm of reluctance. Afterwards followed the 
more Northern group, North Carolina, Tennessee, and 
Virginia. The Old Dominion was conservative, and, as 
the slave-breeding State, had no interest in the renewal of 
the slave trade. Unionism made a stand in East Tennes- 
see, Western Virginia, and the uplands of North Carolina, 
hill districts from which nature had rej)elled slavery. The 
border States, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, in 
which slavery existed but was not dominant, wavered and 
remained debatable, the two last nearly to the end, though 
all three were kept formally in the Union. Otherwise 
secession swept the South, though more or less of violence 
no doubt was everywhere used to crush dissent or hesita- 
tion, and the revolution was the work of a thorough-going 
minority, as revolutions usually are. The ordinances by 
which the States had severally entered the Union were 
repealed, a congress was held, and a Southern confederacy 
was formed, with a constitution modelled in general after 
that of the United States, but distinctly recognizing State 
sovereignty and proclaiming negro-slavery as the founda- 
tion of the new commonwealth. Changes of detail, per- 
haps improvements, were made, such as the lengthening 
of the Presidential term, with the abolition of the power of 
re-election, and the admission of ministers of state to Con- 
gress ; but it is needless to dwell on them, as they were 
still-born. Alexander Stephens, the Vice-President, said, 
" The negro, by nature and by the curse against Canaan, 
is fitted for the condition he occupies in our system. An 



V. ilUrTUllE AND KECONSTRUCTION. 243 

architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the founda- 
tion with the proper material, the granite ; then comes 
the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is 
made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by ex- 
perience we know that it is the best not only for the 
superior, but for the inferior, race that it should be so. It 
is, indeed, in conformity with the Creator. It is not for 
us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to 
question them. For His own purposes He has made one 
race to differ from another as He has made one ' star to 
differ from another star in glory.' The great objects 
of humanity are best attained when conformed to His 
laws, in the constitution of governments as well as in all 
things else. Our confederacy is founded upon a strict 
conformity with these laws. The stone which was rejected 
by the fu-st builders is become the chief stone of the cor- 
ner in our new edifice." After such an avowal, and in 
face of the fact that the line of political cleavage exactly 
coincided with that of slavery, following its windings both 
generally and in the exceptional cases of Tennessee, Vir- 
ginia, and North Carolina, while the border States, which 
were half slave, remained politically waverers, who could 
doubt that slavery was the cause of secession ? The ques- 
tion between free trade and protection, which the emissa- 
ries of the South in free trade England sought to present 
as the real cause, had, indeed, always divided the agricul- 
tural South from the manufacturing North, and had in 
Calhoun's time given rise to Nullification. But it was 
derivative, and its influence was secondary. The Confed- 
eracy was in its essence a slave-power, and as such boldly 
flaunted its banner in the face of humanity. Jefferson 
Davis, a man after the Southern heart, able, impetuous. 



244 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

and overbearing, was elected President. His government 
was recognized and obeyed over a compact territory large?' 
than Fiance, Spain, Portugal, and the British Islands put 
together, with a population greater than that of the old 
thirteen colonies, and with many times their wealth. A 
new flag, or rather the old flag with a secessionist varia- 
tion, was unfurled, and the slave power took its place for 
four years among the nations. Richmond, a new capital, 
confronted Washington. Under whatever constitutional 
forms the Confederate government might be set up, the 
South, when the war had commenced, had no constitution 
but that of a beleaguered city. Its President became a 
commandant ; its Congress sat in secret, mutely register- 
ing his decrees ; all safeguards for personal liberty were 
suspended ; the government assumed absolute mastery 
not only of the property but also of the persons of all 
citizens for the purposes of the war ; the press became a 
sounding-board. The revolution which had given birth 
to such liberties could not fail to provoke the mockery of 
the North, but it was invasion which made the government 
of the South despotic, and laws must sleep when a nation 
is struggling for its life. It was true, however, that the 
spirit of the slave-owner ruled at Richmond, and showed 
its pitiless and masterful temper beyond even the necessi- 
ties of war. 

As the States seceded, their representatives withdrew 
from Congress with farewells more or less defiant. Had 
Jackson been President, instead of being suffered to de- 
part, they might have been laid by the heels, and their plot 
might have been disconcerted for the time. But Buchanan, 
besides being the nominee of the slave-owners, was a 
weak man, and his position was weaker still. He was 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 246 

an outgoing President, about to be replaced by a President- 
elect of the opposite party. These intervals, during which 
government is severed from power, are a weak point in the 
American constitution, and are one of the proofs that its 
framers failed to foresee the ascendancy of party, and the 
situations which would thereby be created. Buchanan 
first, in a double-faced manifesto, pronounced that seces- 
sion was unconstitutional, but coercion was illegal. After- 
wards, Southerners having left his Cabinet, and being 
replaced by Unionist Democrats, he somewhat altered 
his tone, while one of his ministers. General Dix, 
sent the telegram, " If any man attempts to haul down 
the American flag, shoot him on the spot " ; to which 
the spirit of the North gave a response which might 
have been a warning to the South. But Buchanan's sole 
desire was to be gone, and cast the burden on his successor. 
His conduct could not be less resolute and brave than that 
of Congress, which, in truth, was an ominous lesson on the 
character of the politician trained in the caucus and upon 
the platform. Congress, finding that disunion, beneath 
the threat of which it had long cowered, had really come, 
fell on its knees, and offered the slave owners boundless 
concessions. It was ready to give slavery new guarantees 
and extension, to sharpen still more the fugitive slave 
law, to deprive the negro claimed as a slave of the last 
shred of legal protection, to call upon the States to repeal 
all their personal liberty bills, to extend the Missouri com- 
promise line to the Pacific, and admit New Mexico, includ- 
ing Arizona, with a slave code, to satisfy the prejudice of 
race by disqualifying all men of negro blood for civil 
office. It even offered to place slavery beyond the reach 
of constitutional amendment, and make it, so far as law 



246 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

could make it, eternal. A resolution to this effect passed 
the House by a vote of 133 to 65, and the Senate by 24 to 12, 
just the requisite two-thirds. It would, as Mr. Blaine says, 
"have entrenched slavery securely in the organic law of the 
land, and elevated the privilege of the slave-owner beyond 
that of the owner of any other species of property." This 
resolution received the vote of a large number of prom- 
inent Republicans, and if the Southern members of Con- 
gress would have stooped to vote instead of seceding they 
might have riveted their political yoke on the neck of the 
American nation forever. Even pronounced enemies of 
slavery, such as Mr. Seward and Mr. Sumner, seem to 
have trembled in silence. Nor did Congress much mis- 
represent its constituents. In spite of all the signs in the 
political sky, nobody had believed that the deluge was 
coming ; everybody liad trusted the providence which 
watched over the American Union. When the crisis 
arrived a cold shudder ran through the nation. Local 
elections began to go against the Republicans. The Re- 
publican party, Mr. Blaine says, was utterly demoralized. 
Its great organ in New York conceded the right of with- 
drawing from the Union, declared against all coercive 
measures, and even said that the South had as good a 
right to secede from the Union as the colonies had to 
secede from Great Britain. Democratic orerans went 
further, and declared the election of Lincoln a greater 
provocation than that which the American colonies had 
received from the mother country. Those who spoke 
of secession as rebellion were met with cries of dissent. 
Abolitionist orators and lecturers were refused a hearing. 
Wendell Phillips, after reviling Lincoln as a trimmer, 
would himself have yielded to secession. " Here," he 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 247 

said, " are a series of States, girding the Gulf, wlio think 
that their peculiar institutions require a separate govern- 
ment. They have a right to settle that question without 
apijealing to you or me," General Scott, the head of the 
Federal army, was so far carried away by the tide of panic 
as to propose the division of the Union into four separate 
confederations. Men clung to the hope that the trouble 
would blow over, and commerce prayed for peace at 
any price. 

It need not, however, be assumed that because the 
North did not take arms against slavery, nor was entitled 
to the sympathy of the world on that account, it had no mo- 
tive for making war except the vulgar desire of territorial 
aggrandizement. Northern men might, and no doubt did, 
believe that they were fighting for a violated constitution, 
for a compact which had been faithlessly broken, for the 
vindication of law, reverence for which had been deeply 
planted in their hearts, and even for the political fortunes 
of humanity, which, according to American belief, were 
embarked in the ship of the Union. 

Had the Confederates played their game warily, had 
they spoken the North fair, pleaded the hopeless incom- 
patibility of the two systems, and promised friendship 
and fidelity to commercial engagements, they might have 
been let part in peace. But wariness was not Southern. 
Seeing the North thus cling to the Union, the Southern 
gentlemen thought that the " greasy mechanic " would 
not fight, and they dared him to smell Southern powder 
and taste Southern steel. They were fatally mistaken. 
The greasy mechanic was of their own race, and though 
he clung to the Union, he would fight. 

There is little use in renewing the bottomless contro- 



248 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

versy about the State sovereignty and the right of seces- 
sion. The constitution was on this point a Delphic oracle. 
Its framers had blinked the question of State sovereignty, 
as they had compromised on that of slavery. They could 
not have ventured to avow that the States were disclaim- 
ing their sovereignty in accepting the constitution. They 
trusted to time, and had slavery been out of the way, time 
would have done the work. In sentiment, the allegiance 
of the Northern heart was to the Union. The Northern 
people were imbued with Webster's sentiment. Moreover, 
the new States, which now outnumbered the old thirteen, 
were the offspring of the nation, and of their people many 
were immigrants from Europe, strangers to any original 
compact. Thus California, on the far Pacific Coast, being 
a child of the nation, stood steadily by the cause of the 
Union. The allegiance of the Southerner, more home- 
keeping than the man of the North, and with a narrower 
range of vision, was to his State, which, moreover, he 
regarded with reason as the bulwark of his peculiar insti- 
tution. Many people of the South, who had no personal 
interest in slavery, and were opposed to secession, thought 
it was their duty to go with their State, and their sense of 
their duty grew stronger when their State was invaded by 
Northern arms. Lincoln himself had said, " Any peojDle 
anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the 
right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and 
form a new one that suits them better. This is a most 
valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hojDC and 
believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined 
to cases in which the whole people of an existing govern- 
ment may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such 
people, that can, may revolutionize and make their own of 



V. EUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 249 

SO much of the territory as they inhabit." So had thought 
the American people, and, therefore, they had sympathized 
with revolt all over the world. Southern revolution 
could not have asked for a clearer sanction. But it was 
not necessary to invoke formally the right of revolution. 
Wendell Phillips hit the mark. Two communities, radi- 
cally differing in social structure, and, therefore, in politi- 
cal requirements, had been clamped together in ill-assorted, 
uneasy, contentious and immoral union. At length, in the 
course of nature, they fell asunder and formed two sepa- 
rate nations, the stronger of which proceeded to attack, 
conquer, and reannex the weaker. This was the simple 
fact. It was natural that the mind of the North should 
be possessed by the ideas of union and the constitution ; 
that it should regard secession as treason and rebellion. 
But those names were really out of place, as the North 
itself was fain practically to confess. Not for a moment, 
or in a single instance, did it treat the Southerners as 
traitors or rebels. From the very outset it treated them 
as combatants in a regular war, and accepted the same 
treatment at their hands. The threat of dealing with the 
crew of a Confederate privateer as pirates, being met by a 
threat of reprisal, was instantly withdrawn. Foreign 
powers saw this, and with good reason at once recognized 
the South as a belligerent. Even the term civil war is 
hardly correct, since this was not a struggle between two 
parties for the same land, like that between the League 
and the Huguenots in France, or that between the Cava- 
liers and Roundheads in England, but between two com- 
munities, territorially separate, for the land of one of them 
which the other had taken arms to reannex. Only in the 
border States, in each of which two parties were struggling 
for ascendancy, could it be strictly called a civil war. 



250 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

Lincoln stole by night into the capital. His life had 
been threatened on his journey by that same mob at 
Baltimore, the Plug-uglies as they were called, which 
had risen and massacred in favour of the war of 1812. 
When he reached Washington, and had been inaugurated 
under military protection, his situation was one which 
might well have made his heart sink. Before him was 
secession. Behind him were fear and fainting of hearts. 
Around him was treachery. He was a minority President. 
That he had been raised to power by a party, not by the 
nation, he was reminded by the swarm of partisan office- 
seekers, which surrounded and distracted him even in this 
supreme hour. He had hardly a good adviser, for even 
Seward, the Secretary of State, had for the time lost his 
head, and talked wildly about sinking the slavery question 
in a spirited foreign policy, and challenging the powers of 
Europe to war. His greatest encouragement came, perhaps, 
from Stephen Douglas, who, though an advocate of squat- 
ter sovereignty and slavery, was a patriot and true to the 
Union. Those who had manoeuvred the rail-splitter into 
the nomination, and had voted him into the Presidency, 
must have quaked. But they had chosen much better 
than they knew. Lincoln stood firmly on his own feet, 
and faced the peril with a calmness and a wisdom drawn 
largely from his moral character and his trust in Provi- 
dence ; for fear is generally selfish, and Lincoln could 
have no selfish fears. He presented himself as the servant 
and guardian of the constitution, naturally failing to see 
that nature had torn up that compromise. He disavowed 
any purpose of interfering directly or indirectly with 
slavery in the States where it existed, declaring that he 
had neither the right nor the inclination so to do ; " not 



V. RUPTUKE AND EECONSTRUCTION. 251 

to save slavery or any minor matter" would he permit 
"the wreck of government, country, and constitution." 
The preservation of the Union, with or without slavery, 
he proclaimed as his paramount duty. The Union, he 
maintained, was perpetual, a government, not a mere 
association of the States, and all resolves and ordinances 
to the contrary were invalid. He announced his intention 
of holding all the property, exercising the authority, 
and performing the functions of government in the 
Southern States, but of doing this without violence or 
bloodshed, unless they were forced upon him by the 
South. "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow country- 
men," he said, "is the momentous issue of civil war. 
The government will not assail you. You can have no 
conflict without being yourselves the aggressors." He 
appealed to the principle of government by majorities, 
arguing that if it was to be disregarded the end would 
be anarchy. He appealed to fraternal affection, and 
challenged the malcontents to point out an instance in 
which the constitution had been plainly violated. Their 
answer would have been that the constitution was a com- 
pact, to which the election of a President holding that 
slavery was to be placed where the people would know 
that it was in the course of ultimate extinction, had 
morally put an end. But Lincoln thus kept the weather 
gage of opinion, and his language, moderate, calm, and 
conciliatory, presented a favourable contrast to the violent 
and somewhat blustering manifestos of his Confederate 
rival. His repeated disavowals of any intention of inter- 
fering with slavery inevitably estranged thorough-going 
abolitionists. Commissioners from the South, coming to 
treat in the name of an independent power, he refused 



252 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

to receive, though Seward was inclined to dally with their 
overtures. His caution kept him in touch with general 
opinion. Horace Greeley goes so far as to assert, reckon- 
ing by the votes cast in the Presidential election, that 
three-fifths of the entire American people, exclusive 
of the blacks, " sympathized with rebellion in so far as 
its animating purpose was the fortification, diffusion, and 
aggrandizement of slavery." To be kept in touch with 
general opinion was Lincoln's statesmanship. His special 
object, in his dealing with the slavery question, was the 
retention in the Union of the border States, Maryland, 
Kentucky, and Missouri, tiie scenes of a fierce struggle 
between the Unionist and Disunionist parties, which were 
preserved probably in great measure by Lincoln's jDolicy 
from secession. It was to propitiate these States that, 
even when the war was far advanced, he put forth a plan 
for abolition with compensation. He had also to consider 
the military men, without whom an army could not be 
formed, and who for the most part inclined to the side of 
slavery. He at the same time necessarily renounced his 
claim to the sympathy of foreign nations, especially of 
England, who could not be expected to regard the in- 
vasion of the South by the North as a crusade against 
slavery when the President declared it was nothing of the 
kind. The Southern Confederacy was avowedly founded 
with slavery as its corner-stone. It was, therefore, under 
the ban of humanity. This was the reason for desiring 
its fall, whatever might be the motives of its assailant. 
For the unity and aggrandizement of the American 
Republic many men in England and other nations cared, 
because they looked with hope to the great experiment 
of American democracy; but nobody was morallj bound to 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 253 

care. The South had been politic enough to pay homage 
to the opinion of the world, especially of the British 
people, and perhaps, at the same time, to propitiate the 
slave-breeding State, by inserting into its constitution 
a renunciation of the African slave trade, though it was 
pretty certain that had the slave power triumphed this 
article would have had little effect. 

War broke out in the natural quarter, at Charleston, the 
fiery heart of slavery, the memorial shrine of Calhoun. 
Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbour, was held by its com- 
mander for the Union. The government at Washington 
proceeded to revictual it, thereby perhaps committing, as 
the South contended, the first formal act of war. The ^l^"^ 
Confederates bombarded and took the fort. The effect was 1861. 
magical. At the outrage on the flag the North, of late so 
cold and quaking, burst into a general flame of patriotic 
wrath. Lincoln's call for volunteers was answered with 
enthusiasm, and the " irrepressible conflict " began. The 
second shot was fired in the streets of Baltimore where the 
Plug-uglies rose for slavery, and attacked volunteers on 
their march to Washington. 

The Northern whites outnumbered Southern whites by 
three to one, but the Southern whites had their negroes to 
feed them. The military qualities of the race on both 
sides were the same, or rather the Northern and Western 
farmer, when brought under discipline, was superior in 
steady valour to the " poor white " of the South, though 
his onset was not so furious as that of the " Louisiana 
Tigers," nor his yell so loud. Both sides were untrained 
to war ; but the rough life of the poor white had been the 
better preparation for the camp, and he was more accus- 
tomed to the endurance of hardship, as well as a rifleman 



254 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

well fitted for forest war, and he marched well. The 
Southern gentleman was a horseman, while the people at 
the North used not the saddle-horse but the buggy. Not 
that cavalry were much used for battle in this war ; the 
country was too tangled for their charges and even for their 
formation ; they were used chiefly for reconnaisances and 
raids. The South also had over the North at first the 
advantage which the Cavaliers had over the Roundheads ; 
the gentry were accustomed to command, and the common 
people to obey. It took time to make the Northern Demo- 
crat submit to discipline. Lincoln, when he went out with 
a corps against the Indians, had heard the first word of 
command given by an officer to a private answered with an 
oath. Discipline, however, came in time and was then 
combined with greater intelligence. In intelligence no 
army, except perhaps the Athenian, can have ever equalled 
or approached that of the North. Most of the soldiers 
carried books and writing materials in their knapsacks, and 
mail bags heavily weighted with letters were sent from 
every cantonment. Such privates would sometimes reason 
instead of obeying, and they would see errors of their com- 
manders to which they had better have been blind. But 
on the whole, in a war in which much was thrown upon the 
individual soldier, intelligence was likely to prevail. In 
wealth, in the means of providing the weapons and ammu- 
nitions of war, the North had an immense advantage, which, 
combined with that of numbers, could not fail, if, to use 
Lincoln's homely phrase, it " pegged away," to tell in the 
end. It was also vastly superior in mechanical invention, 
which was destined to play a great part, and in mechanical 
skill ; almost ever}^ Yankee regiment was full of mechanics, 
some of whom could devise as well as execute. In artillery 



I 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. ^ 255 

and engineering the North took the lead from the first, 
having many civil engineers, whose conversion into military 
civil engineers was easy. The South, to begin with, had 
the contents of Federal arsenals and armouries, which had 
been well stocked by the provident treason of Buchanan's 
Minister of War. The Federal navy yard at Norfolk, with 
twelve ships, also fell into its hands. But when these 
resources were exhausted, replacement was difficult, the 
blockade having been established, though extraordinary 
efforts in the way of military manufacture were made. To 
the wealthy North, besides its own factories, were opened 
the markets of England and the world. Of the small 
regular army the Confederacy had carried off a share, with 
nearly half the regular officers. The South had the advan- 
tage of the defensive, which, with long-range muskets and 
in a difficult country, was reckoned in battle as five to two. 
The South had the superiority of the unity, force, and 
secrecy which autocracy lends to the operations of war. 
On the side of the North these were comparatively want- 
ing. Party divisions continued, the war being openly 
opposed, and sympathy with secession almost openly 
avowed by the Copperheads, as they were called, from a 
reptile which waits on the rattlesnake, the rattlesnake 
being emblematic of the South. The North, on the other 
hand, had the advantage of the unforced efforts and sacri- 
fice which free patriotism makes ; and, as the struggle 
went on, power was spontaneously entrusted to the govern- 
ment, which received during the greater part of the con- 
flict the hearty and almost unquestioning support of a 
majority in Congress so large as to produce practical unity 
of counsels. Among its supporters were many of the 
Democratic party, who under the name of War Democrats 



256 . THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

followed the patriotic example of Stephen Douglas. The 
evils of political influence were felt in the choice of gen- 
erals and in the conduct of the war, but perhaps not more 
than those of favouritism on the other side. The press, 
if it gave trouble to the government, did not, like the 
slave press of the South, mislead the people by publishing, 
at the bidding of the war office, false news of successes 
which exalted for the moment, but led to depression when 
the truth was known. 

At the North the supply of volunteers was at first 
abundant and from all classes, patriotic enthusiasm being 
general. After experience of the grim reality volunteer- 
ing declined, and desertion, if the Comte de Paris may be 
trusted, became immense. It was necessary to resort to 
bounties, which led to bounty-jumping, that is desertion 
and re-enlistment for the purpose of getting the bounty 
paid over again, and at last to the draft with the paying 
of substitutes, in whose persons, as the jesters said, a man 
might leave his bones on the field of honour, and think of it 
with patriotic pride as he sipped his wine at home. Under 
the bounty, draft, and substitute system the quality of the 
enlistments could not fail to fall off, while recruiting agents 
would pick up all the waifs, native or foreign, whom they 
could find. But the bulk of the army to the end was 
native, though it included many Germans, British, and 
Irish, who had been naturalized, or who had settled in the 
United States, and could not fairly be set down as mer- 
cenaries. The South, almost from the first, resorted to 
conscription, ruthlessly enforced Avith the severest penal- 
ties for evasion or desertion, from which Northern demo- 
cracy shrank. Guards pressed men in the streets, and 
conscripts were seen going to Lee's army in chains. It 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION, 257 

was complained that the slave-owners by various subter- 
fuges escaped while they thrust the poor under fire. 

The finance of the South in like manner soon became 
requisition and confiscation, the inconvertible bank bills 
which it issued in vast volumes having speedily lost all 
value, so that its soldiers waived the farce of being paid 
in them. It found purchasers for its bonds among its 
European friends, who sacrificed to their sympathy with 
its cause. At the North a war taxation, heavy and search- 
ing, was cheerfully borne. To meet further demands 
bonds were issued, and an immense debt was contracted. 
The North also unhappily resorted to the issue of an 
inconvertible paper currency which in effect was a forced 
loan, raised in a manner which impaired the faith of con- 
tracts, and disturbed industry and trade. The Supreme 
Court, for reasons which must be deemed rather political 
than judicial, afterwards sanctioned the exercise of a power 
not given to the Federal Government by the constitution, 
and denied, apparently for a reason universally applica- 
ble, to the States. A depreciation of sixty per cent was 
the result. 

The South looked for help from England where it 
believed that cotton was king. The free-trade argument, 
early and skilfully urged, prevailed at Liverpool where 
cotton indeed was king, and in other commercial centres 
where the same interest prevailed. Politically Great 
Britain was divided like the United States themselves. 
On the side of the South was the aristocratic party, which 
had always been taught to believe that the success of the 
American Republic would be its doom. The journals 
of that party, eminent as well as violent, poured the 
gall of insult into the American heart in the hour of 



k 



258 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

peril and adversity when feelings are most keen. Ameri- 
can hatred of England, and the former attitude of the 
Washington government, had left their sting. For the 
attitude of the Washington government the slave-owners, 
who had long held power, were chiefly to blame, but 
of this the English j)eople were not conscious. English 
friends of the Republic not a few deprecated the war, 
thinking that it would be wiser to part in peace, and were 
unjustly confounded by the North with enemies. But 
as soon as it was discovered, that, in spite of the disclaimers 
of the American Congress and President, the struggle was 
practically one between freedom and slavery, the hearts 
of the mass of the English people were with the North. 
Nor did the partisans of the slave power in the British 
Parliament ever venture on a serious movement in its 
favour. The dearth of cotton, though severely felt, was 
borne. The government throughout observed neutrality, 
refusing to recognize the Confederacy, or receive its ambas- 
sadors, even when victory seemed to have assured to it a 
place among the nations. Steady refusal met the over- 
tures of the French emperor who, always striving to tread 
in the footsteps of the first Napoleon, and seeking to re- 
establish for France a colonial empire in America, urged 
a joint intervention which when the fortunes of the North 
were low could scarcely have failed to have been decisive. 
For a moment it seemed that the power of Great Britain 
would, in her own despite, be thrown into the Southern 
Nov. scale by the rash act of the American Captain Wilkes, 
who, having confused his mind with the study of inter- 
national law, took the Confederate envoys, Mason and Sli- 
dell, out of a British ship. The act being at first approved 
by the American Secretary for the Navy, and applauded 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 259 

by the people, the British demand for redress was peremp- 
tory. Perhaps the temper of Lord Palmerston, who was 
given to bluster, made it even more peremptory than was 
needful. But wisdom prevailed and the envoys were 
given up. Among the British people, kinsmen of the 
Americans and speaking the same language, as well as 
connected by commerce, the war was a home question, 
and the excitement was intense. By the other nations of 
Europe far less interest was shown. To them the Ameri- 
can Republic was entirely foreign ; and the idea that 
upon its success or failure hung the fate of democracy and 
of human progress had not found place in their minds. 
Even in France, while the government was scheming, 
the people were almost indifferent. Russia, while with the 
rest of the powers she recognized the belligerency of the 
of the South, assumed a politic attitude of benevolent 
neutrality towards the North. The spheres of Russia and 
the United States were wide apart, the difference between 
the governments in character was too extreme for political 
jealousy ; perhaps even as extremes they met and at that 
time they had a common hatred. 

The strategical objects at which Northern invasion aimed 
were the Mississippi, by regaining the mastery of which 
Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and whatever the South had 
of Missouri, would be cut off; Chattanooga, and other 
positions in Tennessee, which commanded the lines of rail- 
way binding the Confederate territory together from east 
to west, together with the entrance into the heart of the 
confederation ; and the coast, by blockading which the 
South was to be debarred from the sale of its cotton, on 
which its finance depended, and from receiving supplies 
from Europe. The political object was Richmond, in 



260 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

choosing which for their capital, placed as it was on the 
northern edge of their territory, and near the centre of 
the enemy's force, the Confederates had propitiated Vir- 
ginia at the expense of their military strength, though 
they no doubt hoped that Richmond in the end would not 
be a border city, since their territory would in the end 
embrace Missouri and Kentucky. The section of country 
between the two capitals, traversed by the Potomac, the 
Rappahannock, Rapidan, North Anna, and Pamunkey 
Rivers, thus became the grand scene of war. Above all, 
the object was to beat and destroy the armies of the South 
which gathered round Richmond. There went on a strug- 
gle, generally of the guerrilla kind, for Kentucky and Mis- 
souri. The South began by striking at Washington, the fall 
of which, though not a military, would have been a political, 
blow, and might have had an effect upon Europe. From 
the vast fortress in which it was beleaguered, its armies 
at times sallied forth to grasp the border States, to 
sweep off supplies, of which its need was always increas- 
ing, to turn opinion at the North, and make the assailant 
loosen his hold. Otherwise, it waged only a defensive war. 
" On to Richmond " was the cry of the North. On, in 
spite of military warnings, the raw militia with a handful 
July of regulars went. At the stream of Bull Run they met the 
■ Confederates under Beauregard. A confused engagement, 
the counterpart of Edgehill, ensued. A fresh Confederate 
force, coming up by rail, decided the day. Obstruction at 
a bridge turned panic flight into a rout, and the Confed- 
erates, had they pursued, might have entered Washington. 
But the victors were in little better plight than the van- 
quished. Aristocratic journals in Europe scoffed and 
jeered. Yet the list of killed and wounded on both sides 



V. KUPTURE AND KECONSTRUCTION. 261 

was ail earnest of a bloody war, and in the midst of the 
panic Connecticut artisans had proved the pith of their 
order by the steadiness with wliich tliey bore off their 
guns. Tlie South crowed loudly, but the North, instead 
of being discouraged, was spurred to effort and measured 
its task. Witli their native versatility, the American 
people turned from the works of peace to those of war, 
took to drilling and learning to ride, to the manufacture 
of cannon and rifles, to the building of ships, or the con- 
version of merchantmen and ferryboats into vessels of 
war, to the organization of the commissariat and trans- 
port, for which hotel-keeping and railway-managing had 
well fitted them ; or of the medical department, for 
the service of which steamboats and railway carriages were 
turned into field-hospitals. Politicians changed the sphere 
of their ambition from the Senate to the camp, not with 
much success, for no civilian commander attained more 
than a secondary reputation. There was a general rush to 
arms, a general outpouring of patriotic gifts and tender of 
patriotic services. Congress voted men and money with- 
out stint, and the call for troops was promptly answered 
by the States. The force of spontaneous zeal in contrast 
to the iron despotism which grasped the resources of the 
South was seen, and the only question was whether it 
would last. 

In the west, the Federals had gained some advantages 
by which the public eye was turned on General McClellan, 
whom national fancy now exalted into a young Napoleon, 
and called to the command of the army with the amplest 
powers and the most lavish supplies. He proved to be an 
organizer rather than a general. It was said of him by a 
railway president, who had employed lum as a civil engi- 



262 THE UNITED STATES. chai-. 

neer, that he would build the best of bridges, but would 
never go on it himself. A great organizer he was. He 
drilled to perfection an army of 150,000 men, yet having 
drilled it, he did not advance, but lay in his camp near 
Washington, still drilling and reviewing while weeks of 
good weather went by. His policy seems to have been to 
create an overwhelming force, bind the Confederate armies 
to the stake at Richmond, destroy them there, and thus 
end secession at a blow, perhaps without prejudice to 
slavery, to which, as a Democrat, he was no enemj^ In 
the controversy which ensued between him and Lincoln, 
the President wrote always with temper and forbearance, 
while McClellan was sometimes arrogant; but the presump- 
tion is against a civilian who meddles with war, and Lin- 
coln's excessive fear for the safety of the capital is allowed 
to have led him into dictating at least one false move. 
That he felt political jealousy of McClellan as a Democrat, 
or a possible rival for the Presidency, is not to be believed, 
whatever may have been the feelings of party politicians 
April around him. At last McClellan moved on Richmond. 
He saw the spires of the Confederate capital, but his 
movements were tentative and irresolute, while his tone 
was always despondent. After a series of blind and 
bloody engagements, in a wooded and swampy country, he 
led back an army not conquered, though severely handled, 
in the field and decimated by malaria and straggling as 
well as by the bullet. It had been the good fortune of 
the Confederates to find at once a great general in Robert 
E. Lee, a Virginian aristocrat, and an officer of the regular 
army, who, though a Unionist, when his State left the 
Union felt bound to go with his State. He had been 
joined by Jackson, nicknamed from his steadfastness on 



V. RUPTUEE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 263 

a field of general panic Stonewall, a striking figure, a 
Calvinist of the Scotch-Irish breed, deeply religious, a 
believer in the destiny of the children of Ham, and a 
soldier of extraordinary energy, valour, daring, and ac- 
tivity, the idol of his men. Lee was henceforth the head, 
Jackson the right arm, of Confederate war. 

McClellan having lost the confidence of his government 
though not of his men was replaced by Pope who put 
forth a gasconading manifesto, was outgeneralled by Lee 
and Jackson, and defeated in a great battle. Emboldened 
by victory the Confederate generals sallied into Maryland 
in the hope of her rising, which though her heart was 
with them she disappointed. She waited for the guarantee 
of victory, perhaps also she shrank from her tattered and 
squalid deliverers. A secondary object of the movement 
was need of supplies. No armies were ever so lavishly 
supplied as those of the North. The length of their 
waggon trains was prodigious. A wealthy democracy is 
sure to care well for all its citizens. But the Southern 
soldiers were called upon to endure great hardships. We 
find them left for days with no food but a little flour. 
We find them ragged, barefooted, and without hats, fain 
to bind old hats on their feet for shoes ; we find them 
without blankets, and piteous appeals are made by their 
commanders for something to cover the defenders of the 
country who were keeping guard amidst sleet and snow. 
There must also have been terrible suffering in their ill- 
provided hospitals, especially when the stern policy of war 
refused to let medicines pass. Pay they had none. Few 
of these men were slave-owners, and they were fighting 
for what to them was their country. Lee, however, suf- 
fered much from straggling. 



264 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

To face the storm which threatened Washington 
Sept. McClellan was replaced in command. On the Antietam 
' ■ he met Lee with superior forces, and fought a bloody 
battle which though indecisive was followed by the retreat 
of Lee. Bloody the battle was, enough to satisfy all 
critics of American valour. A visitor to the field saw the 
bodies lying in swathes. In the length of five hundred 
feet he counted two hundred dead. A lane was filled 
with a battalion of them. The field where he stood was 
black with corpses ; he was told that the field beyond was 
equally crowded, but he had supped as full of horrors as 
he could bear. 

Antietam, though a drawn battle, was for a momentous 
purpose made to do duty as a victory. Lincoln had 
at length decided to strike slavery, which by this time 
must have been seen to be the great enemy, and against 
which in fact Congress had entered the national verdict 
by abolishing it in the District of Columbia. He had 
hesitated long, fearing to outrun opinion, his constant 
guide, his index of that "will of God," conformity to 
which he always made his aim, and to estrange the 
border States. Meantime he had been checking his 
generals of both parties, enemies of slavery who set the 
negroes free within their command, and friends of slavery 
who gave back fugitive slaves to their owners. A shrewd 
move had been made towards emancipation, and a cue had 
been given to the President by Benjamin Butler, a sharp 
lawyer turned soldier, who pronounced the negro, as he 
helped the enemy on military works, contraband of war, 
and confiscated him to freedom. But now the President 
thought that the hour had come, and that something must 
be done to put new life into the cause. He waited only 



V. RUPTURE AND RFX'0NSTRUCTI(3N. 265 

for a victory that his act might not seem one of despair. 
He made a solemn vow before God that if General Lee 
were driven back from Maryland, he would set the slaves 
free. After Antietam he announced his intention of issu-. 
ing, and on the first of January, 1863, he issued, a memo- 
rable proclamation, setting free by his military authority 
all the slaves in rebel States. He still founded his action 
on policy and the constitution. Later on his moral feel- 
ings found free utterance. " If we shall suppose that 
American slavery is one of those offences which, in the 
providence of God, must needs come, but which, having 
continued through His appointed time, He now wills to 
remove, and that He gives to both North and South this 
terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence 
came, shall we discern therein any departure from those 
divine attributes which the believers in a living God 
ascribe to Him ? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we 
pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass 
away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the 
wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty 
years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every 
drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another 
drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand 3^ears 
ago, so still it must be said, ' the judgments of the Lord 
are true and rig'hteous altogether.' " 

There presently followed the enlistment of negroes as 
soldiers, for which the country was more ready as its 
industry was losing many hands ; and the black 54th 
Massachusetts, under its devoted white colonel, Shaw, May 
marched out to glory through the streets of Boston amidst 
great demonstrations of public sympathy. There was a 
throb of race feeling by which the negro soldiers were at 



266 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

liist disrated. This was overcome ; yet it cannot be said 
that they were ever received by their white fellow soldiers, 
or have since been acknowledged, as brethren in arms. 
They fought not ill, being docile, though not dashing; 
but the half of manhood which, Homer says, slavery takes 
from a man cannot be restored by merely putting on him 
the cap of liberty. By the sight of negro soldiers the evil 
passion of the slave-owner was fearfully aroused. At the 
April taking of Fort Pillow by the Confederates, the negroes of 
■ the garrison were shot down after surrender, some were 
nailed to logs and burned, some were buried alive, and 
even whites taken with the negroes shared the same fate. 
The evidence for this seems conclusive. Why should we 
reject it when at this day negroes in the South are being 
burned alive ? 

The slaves never rose. They continued to till the soil, 
supplied their masters with food, and faithfully took care 
of the planter's wife and daughters. The slave-owners 
are entitled to the benefit of this fact. But the negroes 
were children of habit, and ill-informed of events. The 
proclamation of freedom would scarcely reach their ears. 
They welcomed the Northern armies, gave them all the 
information in their • power, and, it was said, never de- 
ceived them. 

The tide, however, had not yet turned. McClellan 
received orders from Washington to follow Lee. He 
stood still, was removed from command, and replaced by 
Burnside, a brave and loyal but hapless officer, in the 
selection of whom Lincoln's judgment strangely failed 
him. Burnside sent his troops to storm a strong position 
Dec. in which Lee had entrenched himself on the heights of 
"■ Fredericksburg between Washington and Richmond. 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 267 

The issue was a ruinous defeat followed by still more 
ruinous demoralization. Irregularity of pay conspired 
with the influence of defeat. More than 80,000 soldiers 
and nearly 3000 officers were absent from the standards, 
and more than one-half of them without regular leave. The 
service of the outposts was neglected; the bonds of dis- 
cipline were being loosened. " Gloom, home-sickness, and 
a disposition to criticise," says the Comte de Paris, " were 
becoming daily more prevalent among that large body of 
troops, lying torpid amid the mire and rime in the clayish 
slopes of Stafford County." Deserters were aided by their 
relatives, who sent them citizens' clothes. The keener 
the soldier's perception of the incompetence of his gen- 
erals, the greater was his discouragement under defeat. 
Burnside lost control over his lieutenants ; he demanded a 
holocaust of insubordi nates; but the government preferred 
to remove him, and Hooker, called Fighting Joe, took his jan, 
place. Hooker formed a dashing and, it appears, a good 
plan for throwing himself across the Rappahannock, cut- 
ting off Lee from Richmond, and overwhelming him. But 
in the execution his nerve or his head failed him. He 
stopped short, and instead of attacking allowed himself 
to be thrown on the defensive, and was out-generalled by 
Lee, who daringly presumed on his irresolution. Stone- 
wall Jackson, after prayer in his tent, made a bold move- 
ment through the woods, which brought him on Hooker's May 

1863 
flank, and by a sudden attack rolled up a division of the 

Federal army. Hooker, who had proclaimed to his sol- 
diers that they had got Lee where he must fly or be 
destroyed, fell back across the Rappahannock, covering 
his disgrace with a bombastic order of the day. This was 
the nadir of Federal fortunes. The friends of the North 



268 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

in Euioi^e desponded, and Confederate bonds sold well. 
Yet the Confederates had bought their victory dear, since 
it cost them Stonewall Jackson, who was killed by the fire 
of his own men. 

On the board between Washington and Richmond 
the eyes of the world were fixed, and by the turns of the 
balance on it the chances on it of the combatants were 
measured. But in the western and central zones fortune 
had been far more favourable to the North. There fought 
the western husbandmen, never so perfectly drilled as the 
army of the east, but strong, brave, hardy, and heartily 
loyal to the cause ; for the notion that the West was 
hanging back and was being dragged on bj^ the East, 
though prevalent in Europe, was wholly untrue ; the same 
spirit pervaded all the States which had remained in the 
Union, extending without abatement even to far-distant 
California. In the West appeared Ulysses Grant, a sledge 
hammer of war, a man of unconquerable resolution, and 
unsparing of blood enough to fight on the principle that 
the North would gain by the sacrifice of two men for one. 

Feb. The capture b}^ Grant of Fort Donelson on the Cumber- 

1862 

■ land River, the great bastion of Confederate defence in 

the west, with a large garrison, was the first bright gleam 

of Federal victory; it, at the same time, revealed the 

commander whose tenacity had snatched success out of 

the jaws of defeat. Another general, the most skilfid 

of Northern strategists, Sherman, destined at last to deal 

the death blow, also showed himself on that scene. Again 

the Federal army of the West conquered, though after 

narrowly escaping destruction, at Pittsburgh Landing on 

April the Tennessee River, in a battle, perhaps the most des- 
1862 

' perate of the war, named from the old church of Shiloh, 



T. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 260 

round which for two days it raged. Grant and Sherman, 
with part of the Federal army, lay carelessly encamped on 
the river bank waiting for the rest under Buell to come 
up. In the dusk of dawn a Confederate army, which 
had stolen upon them by forced marches, awakened their 
sleeping camp with the yells of Southern onset. A day 
of most murderous bush fighting ensued. The Federals 
were overpowered and swept out of their camps ; the 
river bank was crowded with their flying soldiers. Noth- 
ing saved them from utter defeat but the rugged and 
wooded character of the ground, and the hunger which 
made thousands of the enemy break their lines to pil- 
lage the camp. But the Confederates were exhausted; 
their leader fell. Buell having come up, they were over- 
powered by numbers and compelled to retire. An eye- 
witness of the retreat says that in a ride of twelve miles 
he saw more of human agony than he trusted he should 
ever again be called to witness. Along a narrow and 
almost impassable road wound a long line of waggons 
loaded with wounded, groaning and cursing, and piled in 
like bags of grain, while the mules plunged on in mud and 
water belly deep, the water sometimes coming into the 
waggons. Next came a straggling regiment of infantry, 
pressing on past the train. Then were seen soldiers 
with arms broken and hanging down, or other wounds. 
At night-fall a cold drizzling rain set in, which turned to 
pitiless hail, from which the wounded and dying had not 
a blanket to shield them. Three hundred men died in 
the retreat, and their bodies were thrown out to make 
room for others, who though wounded had struggled on, 
hoping to find shelter, rest, and medical care. 

One after another the forts of the South on the Missis- 



270 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

sippi fell, and the Confederacy thus lost its western terri- 
tory, which though it sent not many men, sent large 
supplies of cattle. To complete the opening of the great 
water-way, the capture of Vicksburg, the Confederate 
Gibraltar, alone remained. The work to that point was 
done from above by flotillas in concert with the Federal 
army of Grant and Sherman. From below it was done by 
Farragut, the Nelson, or rather as his chief exploits were 
attacks of forts by ships, the Blake of the American navy. 
A sailor of the old school, Farragut, fought in wooden 
ships, and when desired to shift his flag to an ironclad, 
replied that he did not want to go to hell in a tea-kettle. 
With extraordinary daring he ran, with his wooden fleet, 
the gauntlet of the forts of New Orleans amidst a " hell " 
of fire-ships, and in the face of a formidable steam-ram, 
still delivering his broadsides when the fire was high up 
April the mast of his ship, and captured the great commercial 
■ city of the South together with the southern entrance to 
the Mississippi. The prize and the blow were immense. 
Benjamin Butler, the lawyer soldier, became commandant. 
He played the sedile also, gave the city a strong police, 
cleansed it, and saved it for that season from yellow fever. 
A coarse proclamation, which he put forth against women 
who insulted his soldiers in the streets, being misread or 
misrepresented, raised a storm of indignation on both sides 
of the Atlantic. But if the temper of the male slave- 
owner was fiery, that of his help-mate was not less so, and 
Butler's proclamation might have been necessary, though 
its coarseness was not. A worse charge was that of 
connivance at illicit dealings, particularly in cotton, by 
which, if the commandant himself did not gain, there was 
reason to believe that those about him did. 



r. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 271 

In the central zone, where the Federals sought to reach 
the heart of the Confederate territory through middle and 
eastern Tennessee, there was hard fighting without deci- 
sive result. A typical battle was that fought at Christ- 
mas, 1862, in the cedar brakes of Murfreesborough between 
the Federals under Rosecrans and the Confederates under 
Bragg. The two armies were nearly balanced in numbers, 
equipment, discipline, and experience. The two generals 
had formed the same plan of attack each upon the other, 
and moved against each other at the same time. Each 
was foiled by the other's movement. The evergreen cedar 
thickets prevented a general's eye from ranging over 
the field. For three days, with breaks for rectification of 
position, reorganization, and refreshment of men and ani- 
mals, the eighty thousand combatants struggled for the 
barren honours of a field in different parts of which each 
lost and won. The carnage was great. The killed and 
wounded were thirty per cent of the numbers engaged, 
and dreadful were the sufferings of the wounded through 
the cold winter nights. In the end the Confederate gen- 
eral withdrew to a better position. There followed a 
pause of eight months, after which the armies grappled 
on another indecisive field of slaughter, both generals 
being swept away by routed portions of their own forces. 

In reading the history of this war, the tangled character of 
the country must always be borne in mind : it made the hand- 
ling of troops difficult, disconcerted plans, and rendered 
battles indecisive, since the vanquished withdrew into the 
woods, and there could be no charges of cavalry to gather 
the fruits of victory. The horse were, in fact, as a rule, 
not cavalry, but mounted rifles. General Meade, who had 
gone through the whole war, said he had only twice seen 



272 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

a large mass of the enemy. Battles were vast bush-fights, 
and a large proportion of the wounds were in the head 
and shoulders, which in taking aim protruded from behind 
the tree. 

, On the coast, the Federals were successful in their ope- 
rations. With marvellous energy and ingenuity in adap- 
tation, they had improvised a navy sufficient to blockade 
three thousand miles of coast much indented and masked 
with islands. The Confederates had the ships taken with 
the Federal Navy Yard at Norfolk. One of these, the 
Merrimack^ they turned into an ironclad. Sallying forth, 
she sank the unarmoured ships opposed to her, and seemed 
likely to sweep the waters and break the blockade. But 
in mid-career of devastation she was met by the Mon- 
March itor, the turret-ship of Ericsson, who had with difficulty 
■ persuaded the government to make trial of his invention. 
The Monitor conquered. The ironclad monster limped 
back to her lair, and in a moment the navies of the world 
were disrated, and naval tactics were changed. Blockade- 
running went on with ships low-built and painted grey to 
elude the Federal cruisers. Some cotton, precious in the 
dearth, was run out, and some munitions of war were run 
in. But these were driblets of relief to the South. More 
effectual, though somewhat piratical, was the enterprise 
of a few cruisers, which the Confederates, partly by viola- 
tions of British neutrality, had contrived to launch, and 
which cut up Federal commerce. Notable above all for 
her ravages was the Alabama, commanded by the daring 
Semmes, who displayed a collection of the chronometers 
of the Federal vessels which he had captured, and, having 
no port into which to take them for condemnation as 
prizes, had burned at sea, in contravention of the law of 



y. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 273 

nations as was loudly protested on the other side. Two 
steam rams were being built for the Confederates at Liver- 
pool, but an embargo was laid on them by the British 
government. 

The stress of calamity and danger in the West, the need 
of supplies, and the hope of producing a political effect, 
by shaking Federal resolution and impressing Europe, 
probably all combined in determining Lee, after his 
masfnificent success at Chancellorsville, once more to 
assume the offensive. He entered Pennsylvania with his 
seventy-five thousand victorious veterans, but now with no 
Stonewall Jackson. Amid the rich farms he refreshed 
his hungry troops, while he threatened Baltimore, Phila- 
delphia, and Washington. But no political effect was pro- 
duced, unless it were at New York, where the Irish rose 
against the draft and the negro, maltreated and mur- 
dered negroes with their usual fury, wrecked property, 
and filled the city, then destitute of defenders, with riot 
and panic till the arrival of troops, when the insurrection 
was at once quenched in the blood of a thousand of the 
insurgents. Hooker, counter-manoeuvring Lee, it seems 
with skill, was nevertheless removed from command, and 
replaced by Meade, a trustworthy, though not a great 
commander. With an army superior in numbers, but in- 
ferior in spirit and confidence, Meade approached his 
enemy. At Gettysburg, in a rolling district, the two 
moving hosts were brought into collision. During two July 
days of detached encounters among the ridges, in one of 
which there was a charge of cavalry and the sabre was 
used, the advantage rested with the Confederates. On the 
third and decisive day, the Federal army was concentrated 
in a good defensive position on the Cemetery Hill of 



274 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

•July Gettj'sburg, while the army of Lee confronted it in cres- 
18()3'. cent shape along a semi-circle of wooded slopes. After a 
furious but ineffective cannonade, which exhausted the 
Confederate ammunition, Lee, against the advice of Long- 
street, the most renowned of his lieutenants, launched his 
infantry in column across an open sj^ace of three-quarters 
of a mile against an army strongly posted, and with a 
powerful artillery, which after a deceptive lull again 
opened its full fire. The column, though its veteran 
valour carried it up to and into the Federal lines, was 
destroyed after a struggle more intense than that with the 
Old Guard at Waterloo, and when its remnants drifted 
back in disarray, Lee must have felt that the Confederate 
cause was lost. Defeated, but still terrible, he was allowed 
to fall back into Virginia unmolested, and to carry off the 
booty which he had swept from Pennsylvanian fields. He 
even in a defensive position again offered battle, wdnch 
Meade was too prudent, the exulting North thought too 
timid, to accept. 
July On the day after Gettysburg, Vicksburg, the last and 
ise's. most redoubtable stronghold of the Confederates on the 
Mississippi, fell, after a long siege and much outpouring 
of Federal blood, before the indomitable energy of Grant, 
which afterwards turned the wavering balance decisively 
in favour of the Federals on the battle ground of middle 
Tennessee. When the next campaign opened the re- 
sources of the South were running low. She had begun 
to think of enlisting negroes, thus setting the house on 
fire to save it. Her conscription had drawn her last able- 
bodied man ; it had come to tlie old men and the boys, 
robbing, as Grant said, the cradle and the grave. Her 
railroads were worn out ; the sea was inexorably closed 



V. KUrrUKE AND UECONSTIIUCTION. 275 

to her; her paper money had lost all value. There 
remained to her only the army of Lee, Lee himself, and 
another army commanded by Joseph Johnston, which lay 
between the invader's force, gathering ior attack in Ten- 
nessee, and Atlanta in Georgia, the great Confederate 
place of arms. Now, too. Federal operations, which 
hitherto had lacked unity, the armies moving, as Grant 
said, like a team of balky horses without reference to 
each other, and had been marred by political interference, 
were combined under Grant, who, placed in supreme com- Mar. 
mand with the title of Lieutenant-General, grasped the ' 

whole war in his single hand, thrust political meddling 
aside, formed his own plans, kept his own counsels, and 
proceeded unsparingly to apply his principle of attrition, 
wearing down by incessant battle what remained of the 
Southern force. 

The plan was that Grant should move on Richmond, or 
rather on Lee who covered it, taking Richmond if he 
could ; at all events, holding Lee there and exhausting 
him, while Sherman from Chattanooga moved on Atlanta, 
piercing the Confederacy to the heart. Grant crossed the 
Rappahannock with an army greatly superior in number 
to that of his enemy, though reduced in quality by 
the substitution of the draft for volunteering. In the 
Wilderness, a gloomy tract covered with a dense growth 
of scraggy pine, scrub oak, dwarf chestnut, and hazel, a 
tract where the general could not see the length of a May, 
brigade, was fought during two days the first battle of 
a series, all equally blind and bloody, which is stated to 
have cost Grant on the whole 64,000 men, while the 
loss of his opponent also was heavy and could not, like 
Grant's, be repaired. If carnage can ennoble war, war was 



I 



276 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

ennobled here. From dawn to dusk, we are told, the roar 
of the guns was ceaseless. A tempest of shells shrieked 
through the forest and ploughed the fields. When night 
came, in the angle of the works where the fire had been 
hottest, men in hundreds killed and wounded were piled 
in heaps, some bodies that had lain for hours under the 
concentric fire being perforated with wounds, while the 
masses of slaughter were at times moved by the writhing 
of the wounded. At the battle of the Wilderness the 
woods caught fire and the wounded were burned. Bul- 
lets came in such a stream that a tree eighteen inches 
in diameter was cut in two by them. It is wonderful that 
humanity should not be extinguished on such scenes; 
that, on the contrary, brave soldiers should be generally 
humane. 

So dense was the wood that when abatis were being 
made on both sides only two hundred yards apart, while 
the ringing of the axe could be heard, neither side could 
see a man of the Other. In this war, fighting always in 
woods, or broken ground, the men learned not only to seek 
cover but to make it. Whenever they were in position 
they threw up earthworks. With their wood-craft they 
easily constructed abatis, and battles were fought with 
the axe and trenching tool as well as with the musket. 

Lee, while vastly outnumbered, had the advantages of 
perfect knowledge of the country, of the defensive, and of 
the interior line. With these, and his superior general- 
ship, he held his own, presenting everywhere a front 
strengthened by works to his pertinacious foe. At Cold 
Harbour, where in the course of their wrestle the comba- 
tants were brought close to Richmond, Grant delivered a 
desperate assault upon Lee's defences, which was repulsed 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 277 

in half an hour with the h)ss of 7000 men. After the 
battle of the Wilderness, he had proclaimed his intention 
of "fighting it out on that line, if it took all summer." 
But he found himself baffled everywhere by the moving 
rampart. Trying to turn that which he was unable to 
pierce, he worked round to Petersburg on the south of 
Richmond, before which, after an unsuccessful assault, he 
was set fast, and had to resign himself to a regular invest- 
ment. By this movement he uncovered Washington, the 
constant object of Lincoln's excessive solicitude, showing 
thereby that the control of the war had really passed from 
the White House to the camp. Upon Washington the 
Confederate general, Early, swooped from the Shenandoah 
Valley, filling the city with alarm. To close that sally- 
port, and punish the zeal of the people of the Shenandoah, 
the rich and smiling valley was ravaged by Sheridan " so 
that a crow flying down it would have to carry his own 
rations." Two thousand barns filled with wheat and hay 
and farming implements, and seventy mills filled with 
flour and wheat, were among the things destroyed. 
Sheridan, the hardest of hitters, having run a swift career 
of victory, had nobler achievements to record. 

When it is asked, of what use was all this slaughter in 
the Wilderness, the answer sometimes given is, that public 
opinion called for action. Grant, however, had applied 
with effect his strategy of attrition. Lee's army had been 
worn down. It had also been held fast while the other part 
of the plan of campaign was being executed by Sherman. 
Advancing from Chattanooga, Sherman pushed before 
him, by manceuvres, the Confederate army under John- 
ston, a first-rate strategist, who, with far inferior forces, 
played the game of chess with stubbornness and skill, 



k 



278 THE UNITED STATES. chap. || 

maintaining himself in successive positions, and when he 
was attacked in one of them, gaining a victory. In the 
campaign of Sherman were most fully displayed the military 
mechanics in which this war, made by the most mechanical 
of nations, and by armies fuller than other armies ever 
were of skilled workmen, transcended every other war. 
Sherman bears his testimony to the management of the 
railroads. " No matter when or where a breach has been 
made, the repair train seemed on the spot, and the damage 
was repaired generally before I knew of the break. 
Bridges have been built with surprising rapidity, and 
the locomotive whistle was heard in an advanced camp 
almost before the echoes of the skirmish-fire had ceased. 
Some of the bridges, those of the Oostanaula, the Etowah, 
and Chattahoochee, are fine, substantial structures, and 
were built in an inconceivably short time, almost out of 
material improvised on the spot." The trestle bridge 
across the Chattahoochee River near Atlanta was 780 feet 
in length, and 90 feet in height, and was reconstructed in 
four and a half days. The Potomac Creek bridge, 414 
feet long and 82 feet high, was repaired in forty hours. 
The Aquia Creek Railroad on the Potomac, thirteen miles 
in length, was opened in five days after the order to begin 
the work was given. The Federal hosts were acting in a 
country where war would not support war, and could not 
have moved without railroads to supply them. The tele- 
graph marched everywhere with the armies, and must, on 
the whole, have greatly aided operations, though it might 
sometimes have been the instrument of unwise interfer- 
ence with commanders. In the waggon trains, and in every 
mechanical department, American ingenuity introduced 
improvements which the skilled mechanics in the ranks 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 279 

knew how to use and repair. Wonderful feats of trans- 
portation were performed. An army corps was transported 
fourteen hundred miles, equally divided between land and 
water, in eleven days along rivers obstructed by snow and 
ice and over mountains amidst violent snow storms with- 
out the least loss. A division, including a brigade of 
artillery, and comprising 17,314 men, 1038 horses, 2371 
mules, 351 waggons, and 83 ambulances, was embarked on 
the Tennessee and sent to New Orleans, 1330 miles in 
thirteen days. Thus it was that Sherman's movement 
was rendered possible. 

When Johnston, retreating, and Sherman, following, 
approached Atlanta, the Confederate President, never, 
like Lincoln, master of himself, lost patience, and from 
the wary Johnston transferred the command to the im- 
petuous Hood. Hood at once fought a battle in which Nov. 
he was defeated. Atlanta fell and was made desolate, 
all its store-houses, dep8t-buildings, and factories of 
arms going up together in a vast flame. Sherman, now 
disembarrassed, could venture to leave his base, and with 
safe temerity march through Georgia, foraging on the 
country, and destroying as he went everything that 
could serve the purposes of war. The rich city of Dec. 
Savannah, with its forts and stores and its facilities for 
blockade-running, surrendered to him. The defences of 
Mobile, the military port of the Confederates, had been Aug. 
forced and the flotilla, which they protected, had been 
destroyed by the valour of Farragut. Charleston surren- Feb. 
dered without a blow, fired, in destroying the stores, by the ''■ 
retreating army of the Confederates, and Garrison stood tri- 
umphant beside the great marble slab of Calhoun. Mean- 
time, Hood, with what remained of his army, attempting to 



280 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

Dec. strike northwards, had been annihilated at Nashville by 

1 ftfiil 

■ Thomas. The Confederacy, now become a hollow shell, 
collapsed on every side. 

Lee at last, overwhelming forces gathering round him, 
was compelled to fly. One Sunday the Confederate 
President, sitting in church, where he was a regular 
attendant, received a dispatch which caused him to turn 
pale, rise, and depart. It was from Lee, saying that 
April, Richmond must be evacuated. The evacuation was a scene 
'^' of the widest disorder and woe, fire being set to the 
military stores and spreading to the city. Lee was soon 
overtaken in his retreat, overpowered, and compelled to 
April surrender to Grant. At Appomattox Court House was 
jgg'g enacted the closing scene. The victor behaved with 
generosity to the vanquished, paroled their army, and 
bade the privates of the cavalry as well as the officers 
take away their horses, saying that they might need them 
for the spring ploughing and other farm work. His good 
nature was the earnest of a reconciliation, which after a 
conflict so desperate seemed to the world to be hopeless. 
" Men ! we have fought through this war together ; I 
have done the best I could for you," was Lee's parting 
address to his army ; it might have served for Hannibal, 
as well as for Lee. 

The last victim was Lincoln. He had been re-elected 
President, and by an overwhelming majority. General 
McClellan was the Democratic, and the only other candi- 
date, for Fremont who had been nominated by the radicals 
was withdrawn. A plank in the Democratic platform 
denounced the war as a failure, but was belied by victory, 
and repudiated b}^ McClellan. Greater effect was prob- 



V. RUPTUKE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 281 

ably produced by the denunciation of arbitrary arrests, 
and other strong measures, to which the government had 
deemed it necessary to resort, and which offended the 
American sense of personal liberty. Party, as an organized 
interest and force, was not extinct, and the Irish vote 
was always Democratic. But the nation agreed with 
Lincoln that it was dangerous "to swap horses when 
crossing a stream," and few would desire another in- 
terregnum like the last days of Buchanan. Lincoln 
was now digesting his plan of reconstruction, which was 
sure to be inspired by good sense and mercy. This 
tyrant, as his enemies styled him, had always neglected 
to surround himsalf witli guards, though threats of assas- 
sination were in the air. He was relieving his over- April 
wrought brain in the theatre, when he was shot in his 18Q5 
box by Wilkes Booth, a Southerner, and a ranting actor 
of melodrama, who then vaulted upon the stage, and 
brandishing a bloody dagger with which he had struck 
one of Lincoln's suite, shouted sic se7npe)' tyrannis, the 
motto of the tyrannicide republicanism of the Virginian 
slave-owner. Booth was hunted down and slain by his 
pursuers ; happily, since evil passions might have been 
awakened by his trial. Lincoln was borne to the grave 
amidst an immense outburst of public sorrow, admiration, 
and gratitude. Admiration has risen to worship, and 
Lincoln has, in the minds of some of his eulogists, become 
the greatest statesman and the master spirit of his age. 
He has even become a great strategist, though it seems 
almost certain that he did harm by interfering, or allowing 
his military counsellors at Washington to interfere, with 
the conduct of the war. He said himself that he had not 
controlled events, but had been guided by them. To 



282 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

know how to be guided by events, however, if it is not 
imperial genius, is practical wisdom. Lincoln's goodness 
of heart, his sense of duty, his unselfishness, his freedom 
from vanity, his longsuffering, his simplicity, were never 
disturbed either by power or by opposition. The habit 
which he retained through all the dark days of his Presi- 
dency, of throwing his thoughts into the form of pithy 
stories and apologues, caused him to be charged withlevity- 
To the charge of levity no man could be less open. 
Though he trusted in Providence, care for the public 
and sorrow for the public calamities filled liis heart and 
sat visibly upon his brow. His State papers are excellent, 
not only as political documents, but as compositions, and 
are distinguished by their depth of human feeling and 
tenderness from those of other statesmen. He spoke 
always from his own heart to the heart of the people. 
His brief funeral oration over the graves of those who 
had fallen in the war is one of the p-ems of the lansruagfe. 

o o to 

The death of Lincoln on the eve of reconstruction was 
an irreparable loss, especially to the vanquished. With 
good reason General Sherman, when he received the 
news, told a Confederate general that the worst of all 
disasters had befallen the Confederate cause. 

That the war had really been international, not civil, 
was felt by. the victors, though not recognized. To the 
official theory that secession had been rebellion and 
treason, a nominal deference was paid by the imprison- 
ment and indictment of Jefferson Davis, who, when 
Lincoln would have desired his escape, had been caught 
rather farcically disguised in woman's clothes. But no 
blood was shed on the scaffold, nor, saving the abolition 
of slavery, was there any confiscation. The abolition of 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 283 

slavery in itself was a heavy punishment to the slave- 
owning authors of secession ; it stripped them at once 
of their property and of their social grandeur. Of the 
planter aristocracy and of the " first families of Virginia " 
this was the grave. They had staked all, and all was lost. 
It is due, however, to the people of the North to say 
that among them generally there never had been any 
thought of vengeance, not even while the conflict was 
still raging, though the feelings excited were not much 
less intense than those excited by a really civil war. 
All but the fiercest fanatics said that the object sought 
was the restoration of the Union, and that the South would 
find mercy if it would only submit to the law. Good- 
nature and humanity not only survived, but reigned. Care 
was taken of Confederate as well as of Federal wounded. 
Confederate prisoners were well fed, and in the prison 
camps seemed to suffer no hardships but those which were 
inseparable from their lot ; if many of them died, it was 
because the caged eagle dies. Prisoners in hospital were 
well tended, and in a prison hospital the table of the 
inmates was seen on Thanksgiving Day spread with 
the good things of the season. This was the more 
notable, because the accounts which reached the North 
of the sufferings of its soldiers in Southern prisons were 
heartrending, and were too true ; they were, in fact, at- 
tested by the arrival of living skeletons, who had been 
exchanged. For scantily feeding their prisoners the 
Southerners might plead the excuse that they had little 
bread themselves ; but such atrocities as those of the 
prison camp at Andersonville nothing could excuse, noth- 
ing except the temper bred of slave-owning could explain. 
Of that camp even the Confederate Inspector-General 



284 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

spoke as a place of horrors beyond description. There, 
in a stockaded field, 1540 feet long by 750 feet wide, 
were confined at last 31,693 prisoners of war. There 
was no protection from the sun or rain ; the rations were 
of the worst quality, sometimes uncooked, and were 
barely enough to support life, while if one of a squad 
of prisoners was missing the rest were deprived of 
rations for the day. Into the brook, from which all 
drank, flowed the filth and excrements from the whole 
camp ; its banks were covered with ordure and alive 
with maggots. When the rain set in the ground was 
covered with slush a foot deep, and the whole surface 
was like a cesspool, which when the heat came bred 
pestilence. In it wandered about, pushing each other, 
the crowd of shoeless, hatless, famished captives, many 
of them with scarcely a tatter to cover them. In August 
and September there were more than 3000 sick, lying on 
the ground, partially naked ; some with broken limbs, some 
suffering from gangrene, scurvy, or diarrhoea, coated with 
vermin, and tortured by mosquitoes. The death rate 
reached eight and a half per hour. The dead were dragged 
to the outlet and hauled away by waggon loads. The 
stench we are told reached two miles. Hundreds went 
mad, and added moral to physical horrors. Whoever even 
put a hand over " the dead line " was shot ; not a few 
courted that fate in despair. Bloodhounds were kept 
to run down fugitives. Out of 44,882 prisoners in the 
course of thirteen months 12,462 died. Wirz, the gaoler 
of Andersonville, a foreign mercenary, was hanged by the 
North, not for rebellion, but for murder, a doom which 
the heads of the department, if they knew what was 
going on, deserved to share. Such was the exit of slavery 
from tlie civilized world. 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 285 

A noble and consoling part of this most tragic drama 
was the Sanitary Commission of the Federals. This was 
the creation of spontaneous effort and voluntary contribu- 
tion, being merely recognized by the government. At 
its head was a clergyman, Dr. Bellows. It received 
contributions to the amount of three millions of dollars 
in money, and nine millions of dollars in supplies. Its 
organization extended over the whole scene of conflict, 
and shed a ray of mercy on every field of carnage. 
Its arrangements for removing the wounded from the 
field to field hospitals and for transfer to permanent hos- 
pitals, as well as its improvements in the construction 
of hospitals themselves, which were planned on the prin- 
ciple of isolation, formed a beneficent epoch in the history 
of military medicine. The Mower Hospital at Phila- 
delphia held four thousand patients. Great is the con- 
trast which this picture presents to the practices of the 
armies of the European monarchies such as Austria in 
the last century. Angesthetics, too, the most merciful of 
inventions, were now lending the surgeon their blessed 
aid. 

Democracy might fairly say that in this case she had 
been justified of her children. The patriotic effort of 
a free community had shown well beside the force of the 
Southern oligarchy or despotism. The Republic had 
received a large measure of free-will offering and sacrifice. 
Tliere had been a good deal of volunteering at the outset, 
and the army, though not volunteer, was in the main 
native to the last. Of the head boards on the graves of 
thirteen thousand soldiers of the Union at Washington, 
almost all bore the name of the dead man, although 
here and there was a board marked " unknown soldier." 



286 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

That the men had homes for which to fight was proved 
by the constant return of corpses to those homes, and the 
activity of the embalmers' trade at Washington, The 
rich who, as a class, had least reason to be well affected to 
Democracy, and who in the United States had been too 
much shut out, or stood aloof from public life, showed 
themselves generally not wanting in attachment to the 
Republic, while some of them displayed the most devoted 
loyalty, pouring out freely not their wealth only, but their 
blood. Mr. Wadsworth, a wealthy landowner, left his 
mansion when he was past middle age to fight and fall in 
the Wilderness. He was the moral heir of the Sussex 
landowner, who also left his mansion in middle age to 
become the first Governor of Massachusetts. Not only was 
the war taxation, though heavy, grinding, and inquisitorial, 
cheerfully borne, but voluntary contributions were large, 
nor did the fountains of ordinary charity and munificence 
in the meantime ceA^e to flow. 

To the surprise of the world the constitution, barring 
State right, came out of the ordeal unscathed. The 
idea of national union had definitively triumphed over 
that of a federal league or compact. The nation had 
been consolidated, and its spirit had been raised by 
community of effort and peril. Southern oligarchy, with 
its influence on the politics of the Union, was extinct. 
The negro had been emancipated, and his admission to 
citizenship was at hand. Otherwise thei^e was no political 
change. The exceptional power with which tlie govern- 
ment had been practically invested for the conduct of the 
war was resigned, or ceased as soon as the war was over. 
Of temporary interference with personal liberty there had 
probably been not much more than the exigencies of the 



V. EUPTUKE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 287 

struggle required, considering that the South had many 
allies and the government many enemies at the North, 
while in the border States not only disaffection, but active 
hostility was rife. Habeas corpus was suspended, and a 
number of arbitrary arrests were made. Yet few, as it 
appeared, which were not warranted by the necessities of 
the war. A limit was sure to be imposed by the constitu- 
tional sensitiveness of the nation, nor could anything be 
more remote from the character of the President than 
arbitrary violence. The press appeared to enjoy reason- 
able freedom, and it criticised the acts of the govern- 
ment with little restraint, though it was necessary to 
forbid the preaching of sympathy with the enemy, or 
denunciation of the draft. A stranger, visiting the 
Republic at that time, saw nothing like a reign of terror. 
At the second election of Lincoln, though passions were 
fiercely inflamed, the minority was allowed freely to exer- 
cise its political rights, and not only to put up its candi- 
date, frame a platform denouncing the war as a failure, 
and vote with perfect freedom, but to hold its public 
meetings, array its processions, and hang out its party 
banners in the street. Nor was any serious act of violence 
committed, or even apprehended, unless it were on the 
part of the foreign mob of New York. The current of 
life at the North flowed calmly on. A stranger would 
not have suspected that he was in a countrj^ engaged in 
a civil war. Engaged in a civil war indeed the countr}-, 
properly speaking, was not. The war was one of invasion, 
and had the visitor been transported to the invaded 
country, to Georgia after the desolating march of Sher- 
man, or to the Shenandoah Valley when it had been 
ravaged by Sheridan, a different scene would have met 



288 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

his eye. Still it was remarkable how small the visible 
signs of disturbance at the North were, considering the 
perils of the times, and the number of citizens who were 
in the camp. 

Nor did the military force show any tendency to get the 
upper hand of civil government. When General Sherman, 
after his career of victory, encroached, probably without 
intention, on the sphere of civil authority, in offering 
terms to the vanquished, he was with ease recalled to 
his proper functions. Europe, judging from historical pre- 
cedents, had believed that the army would be left master 
of the nation and would not suffer itself to be dis- 
banded, but would raise its chief to supreme power. At 
the close of the war the army was a million strong, as well 
as flushed with victory. Yet it was disbanded with per- 
fect ease, at once returned to the trade and callings of 
peace, and mingled with the community at large. Not 
the slightest tendency to usurpation or sabre sway was 
shown by any of its chiefs. General Grant himself was 
not only guiltless of any such disposition, but was averse 
from militar}^ pomp and parade, disliking, it was said, the 
very sound of the drum. His camp equipment, his dress, 
and his habits were as simple as his character, more simple 
they could not be, and he showed, what an aspirant to 
dictatorship and empire could hardly afford to show, 
remarkable justice and generosity in his conduct towards 
his colleagues. The story was current that his most 
formidable rival having formally protested in writing at 
a council of war against Grant's plan of attack, and the 
attack having succeeded, Grant, instead of keeping the 
protest, or forwarding it to headquarters, handed it back 
to the author. Nor was the nation infected with military 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 289 

fever. There was no sign of it, saving a multiplication 
for the time of military titles as harmless as it was com- 
mon. In one respect the military character, at least that 
of the professional soldier, enhanced its claim to public 
confidence, for amidst all the charges and suspicions, true 
or false, of corruption, with which in that season of temp- 
tation the air was laden, none adhered to the honour of a 
graduate of West Point. 

One who, at the end of the war, predicted in European 
company, that the Americans would pay their debt, and 
redeem their paper currency, was apt to be met with 
derision. But, if he knew the American people, he 
replied with confidence, that, setting morality aside, they 
well understood the value of their credit, and were too 
wise to destroy it. The result is well known. Some 
demagogues there were who breathed repudiation into the 
national ear, but their evil promptings took no effect; 
the national faith was strictly kept ; specie payments 
were resumed, and the debt was reduced with a rapidity 
that astonished the world. Nor, looking to the amount of 
war taxation which had been borne, and that of the free 
contributions, could it be said that the generation which 
made the war had cast an excessive burden on posterity. 
Confederate bonds, of course, could not be paid, though 
they maintained, for some time, a spectral existence on the 
stock exchange. Their holders were thus fined for abet- 
ting, or at least confiding in a slave power. 

Industry, though it was for a time diverted from the 
increase of wealth to. the work of slaughter and destruc- 
tion, lost nothing of its activity or thrift. Invention was 
stimulated, especially in the making of farm implements 
to supply the place of the labour withdrawn to the camp. 



290 THE UNITED STATES. chai. 

In this way as well as in the way of medical and surgical 
improvement peace made a little profit out of war. 
When peace came American prosperity appeared to bound 
forward more vigorously than ever. An exception to this 
at first, and for some years to come, was the South, 
which lay wrecked and ruined. Yet even for the South a 
better time was coming. Emancipation was to prove an 
economical as well as a moral and social blessing. The 
negro was to become a better producer; cotton crops, 
instead of ceasing to be raised, were to increase ; the 
higher industries, no longer barred out, were to develop 
resources hitherto dormant, and from the blackened ruins 
of Atlanta was to rise a city far larger and wealthier than 
Atlanta had ever been. 

Evils, economical and moral, attended this as they 
attend all wars. Profuse expenditure leads to a violent 
displacement of wealth, opens the door to frauds, espe- 
cially in the dark region of contracts, and gives birth to 
fortunes of sudden growth, often ill made, and when ill 
made pretty sure to be ill spent. In this case the 
expenditure had been more than profuse, and, till the 
administration was organized, had been little controlled. 
Inconvertible paper had inevitably led to speculation in 
gold, and the Gold Room became a vast gambling hell, 
which left its trace on commercial character. Among 
the unhappy results of an economical kind freetraders 
will reckon the war tariff, imposed for the purpose of 
revenue, but continued wlien the war was over, at the 
instance of the industries which had profited by it, for 
the purpose of protection. Much the same thing had 
happened after 1812, when the protection which the war 
had given was renewed in the form of a tariff. The 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 291 

political party which had made and sustained the war, in 
fact, presently became the party of the tariff, and appeals 
to war memories and war feelings were made in the 
interest of protection. Resentment against England, 
which had been created by altercations with her govern- 
ment, and the escape of Confederate cruisers from her 
ports, aided the native manufacturer in what he was able 
to represent as the patriotic exclusion of British goods. 

A literary man may, perhaps, feel some disappointment 
at the failure of this mighty stirring of the national spirit 
to produce much literary fruit, especially in the way of 
poetry. There were poems, not a few martial and pa- 
triotic. But they read more like the laboured tributes of 
Laureates to the nation than like the offspring of inspira- 
tion, and none of them can be called great. Perhaps 
" John Brown," which became a sort of Marseillaise, and 
"Maryland, My Maryland," which breathed the j^earning 
of a border State for peace, were the two most genuine 
expressions of sentiment among the poetic j)roducts of the 
time. We are still without a worthy history of the war. 
The materials abound, and include a number of memoirs 
written by the chief actors. Never were there so many 
soldiers who could use the pen as well as the sword. 
Marlborough could not spell. 

The cost of the war is incalculable. To a declared 
Federal debt of $2,757,000,000 are to be added five years 
of war taxation, the debts of the several States, and now a 
pension list of a hundred and forty millions of dollars 
a year, together with the loss of industry, the ruin of 
commerce, and the destruction of property, which at the 
South was immense, and fell ultimately on the restored 
Union. It is reckoned that between battle and disease 



292 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

a million of men lost their lives, or were crippled in the 
war. So much did it cost to abolish American slavery. 
In Russia the emancipation of the serfs was effected with- 
out the loss of life or money to the State. The slaves in 
the West Indies were emancipated peacefully at a cost of 
twenty millions sterling, or a hundred and fifty millions 
of dollars, little more than two-thirds of the amount of the 
pension list for one year. There are some things, though 
they may be few, which a supreme authority in good hands 
can do best. 

There were questions yet to be settled with foreign 
powers. The French emperor, having failed to lure the 
British government into an intervention, his secret aim in 
which probably was the recovery of Louisiana, had set up 
a Latin Empire in Mexico, of which he made the Austrian 
Prince Maximilian emperor, j^lacing a French marshal at 
his side, and, no doubt, intending to treat him as a satrap. 
At the end of the American war the French emperor 
received from the Washington government notice to 
quit. He gave ear and withdrew his army. Maximilian, 
remaining behind out of chivalrous regard for his par- 
tisans in Mexico, was overpowered by the patriots, to 
whom American generals are believed privately to have 
supplied arras, taken prisoner, and shot. Of British 
neutrality both the contending parties, as was to be 
expected, had complained ; the South denouncing it as a 
veiled alliance with the North, because recognition was 
refused to the Confederacy, Confederate envoys were not 
received, and neutrality laws were enforced; the North 
denouncing it as a veiled alliance with the South because 
the neutrality laws were, in a few instances, successfully 
evaded by the Confederates. From the shipyards and 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 293 

harbours of a nation, which, besides her own ports, has 
those of maritime dependencies all over the world, in 
the course of more than four years' war three Confed- 
erate privateers escaped. In one case, that of the Ala- 
bama^ the British government was open to the charge 
of culpable delay, the evidence of the vessel's character, 
furnished by the American ambassador, having been 
allowed to lie too long before the legal adviser of the 
Crown, who happened to be incapacitated by sickness. The 
vessel escaped from Liverpool when the order for her de- 
tention was on its way, under pretence of a trial trip, 
without a clearance and unarmed ; she took her armament 
on board at the Azores. That the British government 
desired or connived at any breach of its neutrality is abso- 
lutely untrue. There was understood to be only one 
member of the Cabinet who even wished success to the 
South, for Lord Palmerston, though he might not be a 
friend of the American Republic, was a zealous opponent 
of slavery. Some colour was perhaps given to the impu- 
tation of unfriendliness by the habitual haughtiness, it 
may be discourtesy, of Lord Russell. The North availed 
itself of the British market for the purchase of arms and 
munitions of war, while its agents recruited along the 
Canadian frontier, and the number of Canadians enlisted 
in its armies was reckoned by the Canadian government 
at many thousands. Nor did the Canadian government 
afford the slightest ground for the imputation that it fos- 
tered or failed to repress the machinations of Southerners 
who had gathered on its territory, and could not, without 
breach of law and hospitality, be expelled. For a raid 
which some of them organized it was in no way to blame. 
The ground for complaint in the case of the Alabama was 



294 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

not SO strong as that in the case of the French privateers 
fitted out from American ports under the Presidency 
of Washington, whose honourable desire to preserve 
neutrality is beyond doubt. The Alabama, not being 
effectively pursued, did much da mage to American com- jj 
merce. As compensation for this, and for the damage 
done by her two consorts, the Florida and Shenandoah, 
Great Britain paid, under the treaty of Washington, the 
sum of three million two hundred thousand pounds, 
whereof a part has remained in the hands of the 
American government for default of claims. Compen- 
sation was refused for the raid of the American-Irish 
community, called the Fenian raid, on Canada, and Great 
Britain was fain to pocket the refusal. She feared, and 
always fears, for her North American dependencies as well 
as for her trade. The principle of arbitration, however, 
gained a step. 



Now came the problem of reconstruction. There were 
two questions to be settled, the emancipation of the negro, 
and the re-annexation of the conquered States to the 
Union. Lincoln's proclamation, issued in exercise of 
his military power, had only set the slave free, and this 
only in the States with which the North was at war ; not 
in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, which had re- 
mained in the Union. It was his earnest desire, and he j 
made it the chief platform in his second campaign for the i 
Presidency, that there should be a constitutional amend- 
ment abolishing slavery everywhere and forever. What j 
his plan with regard to negro suffrage was, he seems not to | 
have made known. He had shown himself aware of the 



I 



V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 295 

inferiority of the race, while he recognized its human 
rights. He could hardly be blind to the warning example 
of negro self-government in Hayti, where it has been, and 
still is, a disastrous failure, even when all due allowance 
has been made for the evil training of slavery, and for the 
storm of frenzied and murderous revolution amidst which 
the Haytian Republic had been born. Garrison himself, 
the preacher of emancipation immediate and uncondi- 
tional, had seemed to halt on the verge of negro enfran- 
chisement. Emancipation having been accomplished, he 
questioned whether the President could safely or advan- 
tageously enforce a rule touching the ballot which abol- 
ished distinctions of colour. Nothing, he thought, would 
be gained by forcible enfranchisement without a general 
preparation of sentiment, because as soon as the State was 
left to manage its own affairs, the whites would surely 
dominate, and would exclude the fiat voters from the 
poll. On the other hand, how was the personal freedom 
of the blacks to be guarded, unless the whites were con- 
trolled by political power vested in the negro, or by 
military force ? In fact no sooner did the whites in some 
of the Southern States recover a measure of self-govern- 
ment than they began to frame sharp vagrancy laws for 
the purpose of compelling the freed negroes to work. It 
was a problem, like emancipation itself, hardly capable of 
solution, except by a power supreme over both races, and 
able to hold the balance of policy and equity between 
them. The difficulty of blending two forms of society, 
radically antagonistic, into a single self-governing commu- 
nity, had survived Appomattox in a modified form. 

The other question, taken by itself, was somewhat less 
difficult, provided it could be seen in the true light and 



296 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

disembarrassed of the metaphysical controversies respect- 
ing the relations of subjugated rebel States to the Union, 
in which, seen in a false light, it is involved. The theory 
was that the North had put down a rebellion. The fact 
was that it had conquered, wrecked, and re-annexed a 
short-lived nation or group of communities, severed 
from it by a stroke of nature. Of this the trophies pre- 
served at the North are signs ; for civil war or suppressed 
rebellion has not trophies any more than it has triumphs. 
Military occupation of the conquered States would have 
been simple and feasible. Reconstruction on a republican 
footing could be effected only by the best men and the 
accepted leaders of the States themselves. This was seen 
by General Sherman. " I perceived," he said, " that we 
had the unbounded respect of our armed enemies, and 
that by some simple measures we could enlist them in one 
cause. By their instrumentality we could not only restore 
our whole government according to its written fabric, but 
could have in every vicinage men used to subordination 
and government, who would employ their influence to 
create civil order. I am sure that my own army, now 
disbanded, makes the best of citizens ; and I am also sure, 
that at the close of the civil war the Confederate army 
embraced the best governed, the best dis230sed, the most 
reliable men in the South ; and I would have used them in 
reconstruction instead of driving them into a hopeless 
opposition." John A. Andrew also, the great war gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts, said in his valedictory of January 
the 4th, 1866, that the natural leaders of the South, who, 
by temporary policy and artificial rules, had been for a 
while disfranchised, would resume their influence and their 
sway; that they would challenge the validity of public 



: V. RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 297 

\\ acts done during their disfranchisement; that for the 
?| work of reconstruction their co-operation ought to be 
jj secured, and that without it reorganization would be delu- 
|i sive. The politicians at the South, Avho had made the 
war, were discredited by defeat, and the leadership would 
have passed to the soldiers, in whose worth and honour 
confidence might have been placed. Lincoln seems to 
have been inclined, like Sherman and Andrew, to the 
liberal view. Indeed, he had adopted this policy, and had 
begun to carry it into effect, so far as the constitutional 
version of the case, teaching him that he was dealing with 
rebels and traitors, which necessarily had possession of 
his mind, would permit. In December, 1863, he had 
offered general amnesty to insurgents and disloyalists, 
special classes excepted, on condition of their taking and 
keeping an oath of allegiance to the Federal government. 
He also offered to recognize and protect any loyal govern- 
ment, in an insurgent State, set up by those who should 
take the amnesty oath, if they had been legal voters before 
the secession of their State and amounted in number to 
one-tenth of the votes cast in the Presidential election 
of 1860. He was further willing to aid in any other mode 
of reconstruction that might be adopted in any other State. 
The admission of representatives to Congress he left to 
Congress itself. Under this plan loyal governments were 
created and recognized in Arkansas and Louisiana. The 
enunciation of this policy, however, caused a revolt of the 
radical party in Congress, which formed a [)lai'i of its own, 
providing for a military governor invested with all the 
powers of government, till the rebellion should be over 
and the people return to Federal allegiance, wlien a 
new government and constitution should be framed by 



298 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

a convention, elected by popular vote, witli a sweeping 
exclusion of all who had held any kind of civil or 
military office under the " rebel usurpation," or had 
" voluntarily " borne arms against the Union. The plan 
also provided for the perpetual disfranchisement of all 
who held other than petty civil offices, or military 
grades above the rank of lieutenant-colonel, under rebel 
authority. This, as the result proved, was reconstruction 
by elimination of all that was most capable of governing 
or worthy to govern in each State. 

Lincoln was gone. Into his place stepped the Vice- 
April President, Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, a strong man 
■ in his way, but a man of violent temper and coarse habits, 
who had been nominated for the Vice-Presidency in com- 
pliment to the Unionism of the South, with that want of 
foresight in regard to consequences, in case the Vice-Presi- 
dent should become President, which had been displayed 
and punished by the event in the case of Tyler. As a 
radical leader of humble birth, Andrew Johnson had 
writhed beneath the social pride of the slave-owning 
aristocrats of Tennessee. He longed to have them at his 
feet as condemned traitors, suing for his mercy; and he 
seems to have been ignorant enough of human nature to 
fancy that for his mercy they would owe him gratitude. But 
the negroes he loved little more than the other Southern 
whites of his class, and his heart was on the side of State 
right. His political sentiments, in short, were those of 
the Unionist and war-Democrat, not those of the Repub- 
lican party. On the subject of reconstruction, his policy 
was, in the main, that of Lincoln, and, before the meeting 
of Congress, he ventured to carry it into effect by recon- 
structing, under military authority. Republican govern- 



V. KUPTUEE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 299 

ments in several States, and readmitting them, so far as 
was in his power, to the Union. But he had neither 
the influence nor the address of Lincoln. When Con- 
gress met with a strong Republican majority, it proceeded 
at once to take reconstruction, and, at length, so far as it 
could, government, out of his hands. A violent conflict 
between the executive and the legislature ensued. Under 
the Parliamentary system of Great Britain the struggle 
would at once have been brought to an end by the resig- 
nation of the minister who had not the confidence and 
support of Parliament. Under the American system there 
was no such mode of terminating the disagreement be- 
tween the two powers. Congress, at length, by an Act 
deprived the President of his prerogative of dismissing 
officers of the government, except with the same consent 
of the Senate which was required for appointment. The 
President resisted, and brought the question to a decisive 
issue by the dismissal of Stanton, Lincoln's great Secretary 
of War. Being a man of violent temper, he vented his 
wrath in unmeasured vituperation against Congress. He 
thus lost his few remaining supporters. Congress then 
proceeded to impeach him. He had done nothing really 
worthy of impeachment, and the measure was, in truth, a 
rough mode of forcing the executive into unison with the 
legislature, like impeachments of unpopular ministers in 
England before constitutional government was settled on 
its present footing. This was felt by moderate Repub- 
licans, and President Johnson was acquitted by a narrow 
vote. 

Reconstruction was now in the hands of the Republican 
party in Congress, which showed the usual temper of 
parties victorious after a desperate struggle by giving its 



300 THE UNITED STATES. chap. 

principles a thorough-going application. By two amend- 
ments to the constitution, not only was slavery universally 
and forever abolished, but the negro was invested with the 
full rights and powers of a citizen. To guard him against 
vagrancy laws, and watch over his industrial liberty, a 
freedman's bureau was established. Political reconstruc- 
tion was carried out according to the plan of Congress, 
with a sweeping disfranchisement of all who had taken an 
active part in the rebellion, which for some years excluded 
the Southern whites from political power, and handed over 
legislation and government to the enfranchised blacks, 
who were the clients of the Republican party. Ostensibly 
the negro was master of the States ; but his utter igno- 
rance, incapacity, and credulity made him the dupe and 
tool of white adventurers from the North, nicknamed 
Carpet-baggers, who, in alliance with some apostate South- 
ern whites, nicknamed Scallywags, got the Southern govern- 
ments into their hands. There ensued a reign of roguery, 
jobbery, and peculation under the military protection of the 
party dominating the North. States were loaded with debt, 
and the money was stolen by the Carpet-baggers. In the 
appointment of judges and the administration of justice the 
same corruption prevailed. This was not the way to recon- 
cile races. To wreak vengeance for their wrongs and 
avenge their pride, thus wounded to the quick, the whites 
organized a secret society, called the Ku Klux Klan, parties 
from which were sent forth by night, and committed horrible 
atrocities on the negroes. Like secret societies in general, 
the Ku Klux Klan went beyond its original design, became 
the organ of private malice, and inaugurated a reign of 
terror. At last the scandal of the system grew insufferable, 
military protection was withdrawn from the carpet-bagging 



V. RUPTUEE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 301 

governments, which fell, and the whites were enabled 
to reinstate themselves in power. They did not fail 
practically to disfranchise the negro, either by driving him 
from the poll, or refusing to count his vote. So it is still. 
The negro at the South enjoys, as a rule, personal and 
industrial rights which the war won for him, but is 
excluded from political power. From social fusion and 
equality he is, if possible, further than ever, since con- 
cubinage has become rare, and there is an end of the 
kindly relations which sometimes subsisted between mas- 
ter and slave. Nor is there an entire equality even of 
personal right, since the negro is too often lynched where 
the white would have a fair trial. 

The soldiers of Meade and Lee, the soldiers of the blue 
and the soldiers of the gray, have met as brethren on the 
field of Gettysburg ; but the question between the races 
of the South still awaits solution. 



'} 



INDEX. 



Abolitionists, 232, 233. 

Adams, John, 71, 72, 77, 93, 101, 113, 
139, 141 ; elected president, 150 ; his 
principles, 151; his character, 151, 
156. 

Adams, John Quincy, 191, 192; his 
election to the Presidency, 191 ; his 
character, 192 ; his political princi- 
ples, 192; attacks on, 194; his con- 
test for a second term, 194, 195. 

Adams, Quincy, 229. 

Adams, Samuel, 75, 119. 

Adultery, Puritan method of punish- 
ing, 21. 

Adventurers, the early, in America, 
2, 3, 

Alabama secedes, 242. 

Alabama, the, 272, 293, 294. 

Albany Regency, 179. 

Alien and Sedition Acts, 153. 

Amendments to the Constitution, 126. 

American Party, the, 216. 

Ames, Fisher, 146. 

Amnesty, 297. 

Andersonville, prison camp at, 283, 
284. 

Andre', Major, 107, 108. 

Andrew, .John A., 296. 

Aiidros. Sir Edmund, 33. 34, 55. 

Anti-Mason Party, the, 207. 

Anti-Slavery Party. See Liberty 
Party. 

Antietam, battle on the, 264. 

Appomattox, 280. 

Aquia Cryp.i Railroad, 278. 

Arizona annexed, 212, 214. 

Arkansas, 259, 297. 



Army, the Southern, in the Civil War, 

263. 
Arnold, Benedict, 107, 108. 
Atlanta, fall of, 279. 
Aurora, the, 146, 148. 

Bacon's, Nathaniel, junior, rebellion, 
47, 48. 

Baptists, 13. 

Baltimore, Lords, 48, 49. 

Battles of the Civil War, character 
of, 271, 272. 

Bell, 238. 

Belligerent rights exercised by Great 
Britain, 161 ; question of, 161, 162. 

Bellows, Rev. Dr., 285. 

Benton, Thomas Hart, 185; his char- 
acter, 185 ; on the tariff of 1828, 188, 
189. 

Berkeley, Governor, 47. 

Birney, J. G., 211. 

Black Beard, 51. 

Bladensburg, fight at, 171. 

Blaine, J. G., 246. 

" Blue Laws " of Connecticut, 23. 

Blockade of the southern coast, the, 
272. 

Blockade running, 272. 

Board of Trade, 58, 59. 

Booth, Wilkes, 281. 

Boston, Howe evacuates, 90. 

Boston massacre. 82 ; " tea party," 82. 

Bounties and bounty jumping, 256. 

Bragg, General, 271. 

Brandywine, battle of the, 95. 

Breed's Hill, fight on, 89. 

Brooke, Lord, 17. 



303 



304 



INDEX. 



Brooks, 236. 

Brown, John, 237, 238. 

Bucliauaii, President, 237; his mani- 
festo on secession, 245. 

"Bucktails," 179. 

Biull, 2(jy. 

Bull Run, fight at stream of, 260. 

Burgoyne's expedition, 98; his sur- 
render, yy. 

Burke, 68, 69, 81, 113. 

Burns, Anthony, 233. 

Buruside, General, 266. 

Burr, Aaron, 155. 

Butler, Benjamin, 264; at New Or- 
leans, 270. 

Calef, 34. 

Calhoun, J. C, 168, 170, 179, 182, 183; 
his character, 183 ; his political prin- 
ciples, 183 ; his advocacy of slavery, 
183, 184, 201, 213. 

California annexed, 212, 214; stands 
by the Union, 248. 

Ciillcnder, 154. 

Camden, fight at, 108. 

Canada and the Maine and Oregon 
boundary questions, 174, 175 ; in the 
war of 1812, 169, 170; invasion of, 
93, 94. 

Canadian rebellion of 1837, 174. 

Canadians in the Civil War, 293. 

Canals, 217. 

Canning, 163, 169. 

Carleton, Sir Guy, 94. 

Carolinas, the, 50; constitution of, 
50; division of, 50. 

Caroline, the, 174. 

Carpet-baggers, 300. 

Cemetery Hill. See Gettysburg. 

ChaniK'Horsville, battle at, 273. 

Channing, 230. 

Charles II and Massachusetts, 31, 32. 

Charleston, 51 ; taken by Clinton, 108 ; 
in the Civil War : surrenders, 275. 

Chase, Chief Justice, 161. 

Chatham, 68, 76, 79, 81, 93, 106, 116. 

Chattahoochee, 278. 

Chattanooga, 259. 



ChrsajK'ake, the, 163, 171. 

Church establishments after the Revo- 
lutionary War, 118. 

Church of England, in the colonies, 61. 

Church, the, in Maryland, 49; in Vir- 
ginia, 42. 

Churches in Massachusetts, 9, 10, 27. 

Clay, Henry, 168, 170, 172, 176, 179; 
his character, 179; his political prin- 
ciples, 180; his tariff policy, 185, 
186, 187, 188 ; on American industry, 
187, 190, 191, 199, 200, 201, 205, 206; 
a candidate for the presidency, 207; 
his unsuccessful compromise, 210, 
211 ; his defeat, 211, 213. 

Clergy, the Puritan, 10, 11. 

Clinton, De Witt, 179. 

Clinton, Sir Henry, 95; evacuates 
Philadelphia, 100; takes Charles- 
ton, 108. 

Civil Service, the, under Jackson, 196. 

Civil War, 204, e^ sq. ; chief scene of, 
260; cost of the, 291; histories of 
the, 291. 

Code of New England, 21, 22. 

Cold Harbour, 276. 

College of William and Mary, 43. 

Colonial relationships with Great 
Britain (17CA), 68 et sq. 

Colony, the Hellenic, compared with 
the British, 6, 7. 

Columbia, District of, 264. 

Columbus discovers America, 1 ; typi- 
cal of his generation, 2; a devotee, 
2 ; a type of the age, 2; his life and 
character, 2 ; his dealings with the 
natives, 2. 

Confederacy, the Southern, 243, 244; 
its Constitution, 244; its Congress, 
244 2.52. 

Congress, dealings of, with Bur- 
goyne's troops, 99; first session of, 
131 ; character of, 124, 125 ; powers 
of, in 1775, 86, 87, 104 ; weakness of, 
after the Civil War, 119; offers 
concessions to slavery, 245. 

Connecticut, 7 ; constitution of, 19, 20 ; 
" blue laws" of, 23. 



INDEX. 



305 



Conscription in the South, 274. 

Constitution, the American, 123 et sq. 

Constitutions of the States after the 
Revolutionary War, 117 et sq. 

Convention, the (1787), 122 et sq. 

Conway, 81. 

Copperheads, 255. 

Coruwallis at Yorktown, 109. 

Cotton, John, 8; on an hereditary 
upper house, 18; on democracy, 19. 

Courunt, the New England, G2. 

Cowpens, light at, 109. 

Craik, Sir James, 163. 

Crawford, William H., 191. 

Cromwell, policy of, towards the col- 
onists, 30. 

Cumherland Road, the, 190. 

Currency, paper, wholesale issue of 
(1775), 10-1; results of this, 105. 

Da^is, Jefferson, 243, 244; captured 

and indicted, 282. 
Death penalty in New England, 21, 22. 
Declaration of Independence, 87 et sq. 
De Grasse, 109. 
Delaware, 55. 
Delaware, Lord, 40. 
Democracy, in Massachusetts, 18; 

political growth of, 219. 
Democratic Party, 206, 207, 236, 237. 
Democratic press, the, on secession, 

246. 
D'Estaing, 106, 116. 
Development of the United States 

before the Civil War, 217 et sq. 
Dighton Rock, 1. 
Dix, General, 245. 
Dixwell, 30. 
Donelson, Fort, 268. 
Douglas, Stephen, 234, 238, 250. 
Duane, AVilliara, 147, 199. 
Dudley, Joseph, .33, 34. 
Dudley, Thomas, 9, 16. 
Dustin, Hannah, 27. 
Dutch, the, of New Netherlands, 55. 

Early, General, 277. 
Eaton, Mrs., 197. 



Eliot, John, 26. 

Ellsworth, Oliver, 122. 

Emancipation discouraged, 222; ef- 
fects of, 290. 

Embargo on trade placed by Jefferson, 
164 ; its eif ects, 164, 165. 

Emerson, 229. 

Emigrants to America, the first, 4 
et sq. 

Endicott, 9. 

England's attitude during the Civil 
War, 257 ; towards the South, 258; 
her treatment of America after the 
separation, 140. 

Ericsson, 272. 

Erskine, British Minister at Washing- 
ton, 169. 

Etowah, 278. 

Everett, 238. 

Excise, Hamilton's, Pennsylvania re- 
volts against, 143. 

Expansion, provision for, 129. 

Farragut, Admiral, 270, 279. 

Federal bank, 155, 159. 

Federal principle, the, 20. 

Federalist Party, 150, 153, 154. 

"Federalist, the," 128. 

Federation (1774), 86. 

Fenton, Captain, maltreatment of his 

wife and daughter, 99. 
Fillmore becomes President, 213. 
Finances in 1775, 104 ; during the Civil 

War, 257. 
Financial crisis of 1837, 199, 206. 
Florid' I, the, 294. 
Force Bill, 201. 

Fort Donelson. (See Donelson, Fort.) 
Fort Pillow. (See Pillow, Fort.) 
Fort Sumter. (See Sumter, Fort.) 
Fox, 80, 113. 
France aids America, 105, lOfj, 112; 

condition of in 1789, 115 ; preys on 

American commerce, 151. 
Franchise, the, 220. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 62, 63, 65, 67, 71, 

79, 122. 
Fredericksburg, 266. 



306 



INDEX. 



Free Soil Party, 214, 235. 

Free trade, internal, 12G. 

Fremont, 237. 

French Canada, G4; comijared with 
the English colonies, (J5. 

French Canadians in the War of 1812, 
170. 

French Revolution, American sym- 
pathy with, 143. 

Freneau, Philip, 138. 

Friends. (See Quakers.) 

Fusion of the black and white races 
impossible, 221. 

Gage, General, 89. 

Gallatin, Albert, 166. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 230, 231, 
232; and negro enfranchisement, 
205. 

George Ill's reception of John 
Adams, the first American Ambas- 
sador, 141. 

Georgia, founding of, 52; secedes, 
242. 

Genet, 144, 145. 

Geneva award, 293, 294. 

Germaine, Lord George, 85, 89. 

Germantown, battle of, 95. 

Gerry, Elbridge, 122. 

Gettysburg, battle of, 273, 274. 

Ghent, treaty of, 172. 

Goffe, 30. 

Gold Room, the, 290. 

Gold-seeking in Virginia, 3, 

Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 33. 

Gorton, Samuel, 13. 

Governors of colonies, 59, fiO. 

Grand Remonstrance, the, as a pre- 
cedent, 88. 

Grant, General Ulysses, 268 et sq. ; put 
in command, 275; crosses the Rap- 
pahannock, 275; his simplicity, 288. 

Greeley, Horace, 252. 

Greene, General Nathaniel, 92, 107, 
111. 

Greenland, discovery of, 1. 

Grenville, 67, (58, 73, 79, 81. 

Guildford, fight at, 109. 



Half-breeds, numerous, 224 ; theit 
status, 224. 

Hamilton, Alex., 112, 122, 131; his 
political character, 132; his prin- 
ciples, 132, 133, 134; his financial 
skill, 134; his purity and patriot- 
ism, 134, 149 ; death of, 155. 

Hancock, 75. 

Harper's Ferry, 237. 

Harrison, Wm., his candidature, 208. 

Harvard, University of, 11. 

Hayti, 2li5. 

Henry, John, 163. 

Henry, Patrick, 75, 76 ; his associates, 
76 ; his oratory, 70, 77, 128. 

Hessians, 85. 

Holland joins America against Eng- 
land (1780), 106. 

Hood, General, 279, 280. 

Hooker, General, 267, 273. 

Hooker, Thomas, 19. 

House of Representatives. (See Con- 
gress. ) 

Houston, Samuel, in Texas, 209. 

Howe, General, 90, 94. 

Huguenots in Florida, 3. 

Hutchinson, Mrs. Ann, 13. 

Hutchinson, Governor, 75, 79, 82. 

Independence, colonial disavowals of, 

71 et sq. 
Independents, 7, 8. 

Indians, early relations with, 25 et sq. 
Indians, employment of, in the war 

(1775-76), 93; defeat of, by St. 

Clair, 142. 
Imperial control, 59 et sq. 
Impressment of seamen, 162. 
Inter-marriages, 28. 
Irish immigrants, 175 ; influx, char' 

acter, and influence of, 216. 
Iroquois, the, 26, 27. 

Jackson, Andrew, 148, 172, 191, 193; 
his character, 193 ; his execution of 
Ambrister and Arbutlinot, 193 ; his 
democratic tendencies, 194 ; his 
inauguration, 195, 196 ; his treatment 



INDEX. 



307 



of the Senate, 198, 200 ; his influence 
on public lite and fharacter, 202, 203. 

Jackson, " Stonewall," 202 et sq. 

James II and Massachusetts, 33. 

Jamestown, 3. 

Jay, John, 112. 

Jay's treaty, 140, 147. 

Jeft'erson, Thomas, 71, 87, 131 et sq. ; 
his character, 135 ; his political prin- 
ciples, 135 ; his theories, 135, 130, 
137 ; as a political leader, 138 ; be- 
comes President, 155 ; his simx^licity 
as President, 150; his inaugural 
address, 157 ; his purchase of Lou- 
isiana, 158, 159; prosperity of his 
first term, 159, 100 ; his second term, 
161 ; his jealousy of the judiciary, 
100, 101 ; retires, 105. 

Jesuits, 20 ; their Utopia in Paraguay, 3. 

Johnson, Andrew, 298 ; his character, 
298 ; his political opinions, 298 ; his 
struggle with Congress, 299; his im- 
peachment, 299. 

Johnston, Joseph, General, 275. 

Jones, Paul, 105. 

Judges, United States, 126. 

Kansas, struggle in, on the slavery 

question, 238. 
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 234. 
Kentucky admitted as a slave State, 

127; character of its inhabitants, 

107. 
Kidd, Captain, 51. 
King, Rufus, 122. 
Knownothingism, 215, 210, 237. 
Ku Klux Klan, the, 300. 

Lafayette, 100, IK!. 

Land tenure in New England, 23. 

Las Casas, 20. 

Law, American, based on common 

law of England, 118. 
Lecompton constitution, 230. 
Lee, General Robert E., 202 et sq.; 

surrenders to Grant, 280. 
Leisler, 55. 
Leopard, the, 163. 



Lexington, fight at, 89. 

Liberator, The, 230, 231. 

Liberty bills, 233. 

Liberty Party, 211. 

Lite, manner of, in New England, 23 
et aq. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 238 ; his early life, 
239 ; his appearance, 239 ; his char- 
acter, 240; his abolitionism, 240; 
as a speaker, 241 ; elected President, 
242; opinions on rebellion, 248; his 
position as President, 250; enters 
Washington, 250 ; his statesman- 
ship, 250 et sq., 282 ; is murdered, 
281. 

Literature and the Civil War, 291. 

Locke's constitution for the Carolinas, 
50. 

Long Island, fight on, 94. 

Longstreet, 274. 

Lopez attempts to seize Cuba, 215. 

Louisbourg, capture of, 66. 

Louisiana, 259, 297 ; secedes, 242. 

Loyalists vacate Boston, 90; treat- 
ment of, after the war 91, 110, 
111, 140; England's treatment of, 
112. 

Lundy, the lecturer, 230. 

McClellan, General, 261 et sq.; a can- 
didate for the Presidency, 280. 

McDufiie, 189, 190. 

"Machine," the, in politics, 179. 

Madison, 122, 138, 1.39; elected Presi- 
dent, 165; his character, 166. 

Maine, 33; boundary question, 174; 
admitted into the Union, 178. 

Manufactures, colonial, 57, 80 ; de- 
velopment of, 218. 

Mansfield, 74. 

Marcy, 196. 

Marshall, Chief Justice, 92, 155. 

Maryland, founding of, 48, 49; the 
church in, 49 ; puritanism in, 48, 49 ; 
slavery in, 49, 263. 

Mason, the confederate envoy, 258. 

Massachusetts, founding of, 7, 8, 9; 
the Puritan Commonwealth in, 9; 



308 



INDEX. 



the Massachusetts Company, 8, 18; 
churches in, 9, 10 ; education in, 11 ; 
religious feeling in, 11, 12; policy 
ot, 1(3 et sq. ; elections in, 17 ; fed- 
eration with Plymouth, Connecticut, 
and New Haven, 20; allegiance of, 
to the British crown, 28; practical 
independence of, 28; changes in reli- 
gious and political feelings of, 31 et 
sq.; charter annulled, 33; restored, 
35; Shays' rebellion in, 121; and 
the slave trade, 127. 

Mather, Cotton, 3G, 38. 

Maximilian, Prince, 292. 

Mayfloiver, the, 4, 8. 

Meade, General, 271, 273, 274. 

Mechanical skill shown in Sherman's 
campaign, 278, 279. 

Merrimack, the, 272. 

Mexico, war with (1836), 209, 210, 
211, 212; Latin Empire in, 292. 

Michigan lost to the United States in 
the War of 1812, 170. 

Middle States, 53 et sq. ; population of, 
56; self-government in, 56; consti- 
tution of, 56; education in, 56 ; the 
church in, 56, 57 ; slavery in, 57. 

Military influence, a factor in the 
choice of presidents, 193. 

Military obstacles to repression, 85. 

Military strength of North and South 
compared, 253 et sq. 

Militia, the American (1774), 85. 

Militia, Pennsylvanian, conduct of, 
in the Revolutionary War, 103, 104. 

Miller, Rev. Mr., 61. 

Mineral resources, 218. 

Ministers of State, 125. 

Minute Men, 89, 90. 

Missionary enterprise, 3. 

Mississippi, the, 259, 270. 

Mississippi secedes, 242. 

Missouri and the Union, 177, 178, 259. 

Mobile, 279. 

Monitor, the, 272. 

Monmouth Court House, fight at, 100. 

Monroe doctrine, the, 175 ; object of, 
175, 176. 



Monroe, James, president, 175 ; char- 
acter ot the period of his presidency, 
177. 

Montgomery, General, 94. 

Montreal taken, 94. 

Morgan, William, 207. 

Morris, Gouverneur, 122, 142. 

Morris, Robert, 119, 122. 

Mower Hospital, 285. 

Murfreesborough, battle of, 271. 

Napoleon's confiscation of American 
shipping, 166; his Rambouillet de- 
cree, 166. 

Nashville, 280. 

National Bank instituted by Hamil- 
ton, 134; under Jackson's Presi- 
dency, 198, 199; its fall, 199; vetoed 
by Tyler, 209. 

National Republican Party, 214. 

Naturalization Act, 153, 154. 

Negro, the, as a soldier, 266; status 
of, after the Civil War, 301. 

Negroes, enlistment of, by the North, 
265. 

New England, 4; climate and soil of, 
38 ; material resources of, 38 ; growth 
of, 38. 

New England colonies, 7 et sq. ; pop- 
ulation of, 56. 

New Hampshire, 7. 

New Haven, 20. 

New Jersey, 56. 

New Mexico annexed, 212, 214. 

New Netherlands, 55. 

New Orleans, battle of (1815), 172, 
173 ; taken by Farragut, 270. 

New Plymouth, 4. 

Newport, old mill at, 1. 

Newspapers, 62. 

New York, 54, 55 ; taken, 95; riots at, 
273. 

Norfolk Navy Yard, 255. 

North Carolina (see also Carolinas, 
the) , immigration to, 50, 51 ; secedes, 
242. 

North, Lord. 74, 80, 81, 85, 106. 

Northmen, discoveries of, 1. 



INDEX. 



309 



Norumbega, 1. 
Nullification, 153. 

Oglethorpe, General, 52. 
"Old Hickory." See Jackson, An- 
drew. 
Oligarchy in the South, 220. 
O'Neil, Peggy, 197. 
Oostanaula, 278. 
Oratory, 219. 

Oregon boundary question, 174. 
Ostend manifesto, the, 215. 
Otis, 75. 

Paine, Tom, 87, 105, 149. 

Pakenham, General, 172. 

Palmerston, Lord, 259, 293. 

Pequod War, 27. 

Paris, Comte de, 256, 267. 

Parker, Theodore, 230. 

Parliament and the colonies (1764) , 68. 

Parties, political, distinctly formed, 
150. 

Party Government unforeseen by the 
framers of the constitution, 126. 

Penn, William, 53 ; his scheme of gov- 
ernment, 53. 

Pennsylvania, founding of, 53; reli- 
gious toleration in, 54. 

Pension list, the, 291. 

Peters, Hugh, 8. 

Petersburg, 277. 

Philadelphia, 54. 

Philip, King, 27 ; war with, 27. 

Phillips, Wendell, 246, 247. 

Pierce, President, 215. 

Pillow, Fort, 266. 

Pinckney, 122. 

Pitt, 115, 142. 

Pittsburgh Landing, 268. See also 
Shiloh, battle of. 

Planters of Virginia, character and 
life of, 42, 43. 

Plug-uglies, 250. 

Plymouth pilgrims, 4 et sq. 

Poems of the Civil War, 291. 

Polk, J. K., 210. 

Pope, General, 2(i3. 



Potomac, army of the, 275 et sq. 
Potomac Creek Bridge, 278. 
Presidency, contests for, heat of, and 

its consequences, 179. 
President of the United States, powers 

of, 124, 125. 
Press, the political, birth of, 62 ; early 

growth of, after Washington's reign, 

154 ; during the Civil War, 256. 
Princeton, fight at, 95. 
Princeton University, 56. 
Printing-press, the first in North 

America, 11. 
Prisoners in the Civil War, treatment 

of, 283. (See also Andersonville.) 
Protective tariff of 1828, 188, 189. (See 

also Clay, Henry, and Webster, 

Daniel.) 
Public lands, 190. 
Puritan legislation, 21. 
Puritan theocracy, 9, 10. 
Puritanism, its political character, 15, 

16; in Maryland, 48, 49; in New 

England, changes in, and their 

causes, 36 et sq. 
Puritans, 8. 

Quakers, character of the, 14; in 
Rhode Island, 15 ; laws against, in 
Massachusetts, 14, 32, 33. 

Quebec Act, 94. 

Quebec, fall of, 67 ; taken by Wolfe, 
94. 

Race problem, the, 301. 

Railways, 218. 

Randolph, John, 162, 185. 

Reconstruction, 281 et sq.; problem 
of, 294 et sq. 

Repression, measures of (1774), 83, 84. 

Republican Party, the, 214, 236, 246. 

Restoration, the, accepted by New 
England, 30. 

Revolutionary War, the, 88 et sq.; 
general character of, 110 ; events 
following, 110 ; consequences of, to 
England, 107, 114; to the colonies, 
114 et sq. ; to France, 115, 116. 



310 



INDEX. 



Rhode Island, 7 ; liberty of conscience 

in, 12; Quakers in, 14. 
Richmond, 244, 25'J, 2G0, 2G1, 2G2; 

evacuation of, 280. 
Riedesel, Mme. de, 99. 
Robinson, John, 10. 
Rochanibean, 109. 
Roclvingliam, 68, 81. 
Rodney, 114. 
Rosecrans, General, 271. 
Ross, General, 171. 
Russell, Lord, 293. 

St. Clair, Arthur, 142. 

Salem, 37, 38. 

Sanitary commission, the, 285. 

Savannah, surrender of, 279. 

Say-and-Sele, Lord, 17. 

Scallywags, 300. 

Scott, Dred, 234. 

Scott, General, 247. 

Secession, 241 et sq. ; possibilities of 

peaceful, 247 ; and State right, 

248. 
Sedition Act, 153. 
Semmes, 272. 
Senate, the United States, 124; the 

chief arena for slavery debates, 

184 ; cause of this, 184, 185. 
Sewall, Judge, 38. , 
Seward, 238, 246, 250. 
Shannon, the, 171. 
Shaw, Colonel, 265. 
Shays, Daniel, 121. 
Sheiburne, 113, 142. 
Shenandoah Valley, 277. 
Shrmindoah, the, 294. 
Sheridan, General, 277. 
Sherman, Mrs., case of, 19. 
Sherman, General, 268, 277 ; his march 

through Georgia, 279, 288, 296. 
Sherman, Roger, 122. 
Shiloh, battle of, 2{)8, 269. 
Simcoe, Governor, 141. 
Slave industry inferior, 225. 
Slave laws of South Carolina, 51; 

Virginia, 43, 44. 
Slave trade, Columbus and the, 2. 



Slavery, in Georgia, 52 ; in the Mid- 
dle States, 57 ; in New England, 25 ; 
in Pennsylvania, 53, 54; in South 
Carolina, 51 ; in Virginia, 41 ; clauses 
of the constitution relating to, 127 ; 
and the admission of Missouri, 178; 
Calhoun's advocacy of, 183, 184 ; the 
result of soil and climate, 221 ; 
American compared with ancient, 
221 ; not elevating to the negro, 
222; nor christianizing, 222; sinister 
aspects and influences of, 222, 223, 
224 ; aggressive, 226 ; dominance of, 
227, 228; denouncements of, 2.30; 
political protests against, 229; the 
cause of secession, 243; abolished, 
300. 

Slavery question, the, re-opened by 
the acquisition of Texas, 213 ; now 
dead, 221 ; possibility of a peaceful 
solution of, 226, 227. 

Slidell, the Confederate envoy, 258. 

Smith, Adam, 70. 

Smith, John, 3, 4, 40. 

South American Republics, the, 
176. 

South Carolina (see also Carolinas, 
the), 51; slave code of, 51; rises 
against a protectionist tariff, 201; 
secedes, 241. 

Spain joins America against England 
(1779) , 106. 

Speaker of Congress, the, 125. 

" Spoils system," 196. 

Squatter sovereignty, 234. 

Stamp Act, 68, 80, 81. 

State right, 237; and the right of 
secession, 248. 

States, rivalries of the, after the 
Revolutionary War, 120; general 
condition of, after the Revolution- 
ary War, 120. 

Steam transport, 217, 218. 

Stephens, Alexander, 242. 

Stowe, Mrs. Beecher, 230. 

Suffrage, the, 220 ; and the negro, 294, 
295. 

Sumner, 236, 246. 



INDEX. 



311 



Sumter, Fort, 253. 

Supreme Court of the United States, 
the, 12G; under Jefferson's Presi- 
dency, 161. 

Talleyrand, 151. 

Taney, Chief Justice, 2M, 235. 

Tarleton, 109. 

Taxation (1764) , 68, 69. 

Taylor, Zachary, president, 212; his 
character, 21o. 

Tea-duty, 80. 

Teunessee secedes, 242. 

Texas, annexation of, 212; secedes, 
242. 

Thomas, General, 280. 

"Tippecanoe." (See Harrison, "Wil- 
liam.) 

Topeka Constitution, 236. 

Tories, 82. 

Townshend, 68, 74, 79, 80, 81. 
[ Trade and Navigation Acts, 57. 

Trade, colonial, 57 et sq., 80. 

Treaty of Ghent, 172 ; of Washington, 
294; Jay's, 146, 147. 

Trenton, tight at, 95. 

Tucker, Dean, 70. 

Tyler, John, Vice-President, 208; be- 
comes President, 209. 

University of Virginia, 137. (See also 
I Harvard, Yale.) 
a. 

Valley Forge, 95 et sq. (See also 

Washington, George.) 
Van Buren, Martin, 197; his ability, 

206, 210. 
Vane, Henry, 8, 13. 
Vergennes, 113. 

Vermont and the slave trade, 127. 
Veto, the Presidential, 125. 
Vicksburg, 270 ; fall of, 274. 
_ Virginia, 3, 39 et sq.; society of , 41 ; 

■ settlement of, 40, 41 ; planters of, 

■ 42, 43 ; slave laws of, 43, 44 ; po- 
litical development of, 45 et sq. ; 
the church in, 46 ; education in, 46, 
47 ; loyalty of, 47 ; secedes, 242. 



Volunteering in the North in the Civil 
War, 25G. 

Wadsworth, Mr., 286. 

Walker's invasion of Nicaragua, 215. 

Waller, Sir William, 91. 

War, the Revolutionary (1775-6), 
cruelties of the, 92, 93 ; War of 
1812, motives of , 168, 169; votes on, 
170; England's naval reverses in, 
170, 171 ; close of, 172; alleged justi- 
fication of, 173; consequences of, 
173. (See also Civil War.) 

War Democrats, 255, 256. 

" War-hawks," 170, 171. 

War tariffs, 290. 

Ward, Nathaniel, 21. 

Washington, 71, 72; appointed Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the Continental 
forces, 90; concentrates his forces 
at New York, 94; victories of, at 
Trenton and Princeton, 95 ; takes up 
position at Valley Forge, Si5 ; hard- 
ships suffered by his troops, 96,103; 
his importance to the confederacy, 
96 ; his character, 96, 97 ; compared 
with WLllin.;ton, 97 ; jealousy 
against, 97 ; character of his troops, 
100, 101, 102, 103; his descriptions 
of the times (1775), 100, 101, 106; 
President of the convention (1787), 
121; first President, 130; his power 
and state as President, 130; his 
wi.sdom, 131; his second term, 143 
et sq.; his farewell address, 147; 
his retirement, 147. 

Washington (the city), 149 ; taken by 
General Ross (1814), 171 ; threatened 
by the South (1861), 260. 

Washington, treaty of, 294. 

Watertown, dykes at, 1. 

Wayne, Antliony, 142. 

Wealth, increase of, before the Civil 
War, 218. 

Webster, Daniel, 176, 179, 180 ; his 
character, 181 ; as an orator, 181 ; 
his style, 182; his political prin- 
ciples, 182 ; his opposition to a pro- 



312 



INDEX. 



tective tariff, 186, 187, 196, 200; 
speech ou the vetoing of the 
Natioual Bauk charter, 203, 204, 
205 ; his candidature for the Presi- 
dency, 213 ; his changes of opinion, 
213. 

Wedderl)urn, 73. 

Wesley, John, 52. 

Wlialley, 30. 

Whig Party, the, 206, 207 ; fades away, 
214. 

Whigs, 82. 

Whitefield, 52. 

Wilderness, battle of the, 275, 276. 



Wilkes, Captain, 258. 

William III and Massachusetts, 35. 

Williams, Roger, 12. 

Wilson, James, 122. 

Winthrop, 9, 16 ; on liberty, 16, 17. 

Wirz, Captain, 284. 

Witchcraft, 37 et sq. 

Wolfe, 65. 

Wyoming, 93. 

"X. Y. Z. Correspondence," 152. 

Yale, University of, 11. 
Yorktown, capitulation at, 109. 



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3 



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